[pulseaudio-discuss] accessing native ALSA directly while pulseaudio is running

[Christoph Groth]

Luke Yelavich <themuso at ubuntu.com> writes:

> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 09:09:42AM EST, Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
>> On Tue, 2010-10-12 at 22:47 +0200, Christoph Groth wrote:
>> > Now I wonder, is it possible to have some applications accessing
>> > the native ALSA device while pulseaudio is running?
>>
>> Basically, no, the sound-card cannot be shared that way. Perhaps if
>> you use dmix, but apps which use mmap don't play well with that
>> either I think.
>
> Alternatively, there is the PulseAudio dbus hand-off. Jack2 uses dbus
> to talk to pulse, to request the device. Pulse lets go of the device
> whilst jack2 uses it, and then grabs it again once jack2 is done.
>
> Aeolus can use jack, at least according to the package metadata in
> front of me for Ubuntu 10.10. You could use jack2, which get the alsa
> device from Pulse, and use aeolus that way.

Thank you for your effort in looking this up, Luke.

Indeed, aeolus also works with jack, and I've been thinking of using
this to solve the issue.  However, I assumed that the only way is to
have jack access the hardware with pulseaudio running as a jack client.
This does not seem to be a very nice solution, as I do not need jack
most of the time.

The solution you mention seems to be the way to go.  I'll try it out
once I have some time.

Christoph