[pulseaudio-discuss] Can't get pulseaudio to use alsa/dmix?

[Lennart Poettering]

On Fri, 12.10.07 09:41, Marc MERLIN (marc_pulse at merlins.org) wrote:

> Howdy,
> 
> I have pulseaudio 0.9.5-5ubuntu4 with the esd socket symlink fix.
> 
> When pulseaudio starts, it seems to take over alsa exclusively.
> 
> With pulseaudio not running, mplayer gives me:
> AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample
> With pulseaudio running:
> alsa-lib: pcm_hw.c:1242:(snd_pcm_hw_open) open /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p failed:
> Device or resource busy
> alsa-lib: pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
> alsa-init: playback open error: Device or resource busy

[..]

> .ifexists /usr/lib/pulse-0.9/modules/module-hal-detect.so
> load-module module-hal-detect
> .else
> module-alsa-sink is necesary, or not, but in either case, pulseaudio seems
> to take exclusively over my alsa device.
> Just for info, my current alsa config seems to have dmix on by default.
> for i in 1 2 3; do alsaplayer file.mp3 & done
> works fine, I get 3 audio streams.

You have two options: 

1. What I recommend: install the pa plugin for libasound, like people
on the ML already suggested.

2. What I do not recommend: configure pa to pass your data through
dmix. For doing that comment the module-hal-detect line in default.pa
and instead add a "load-module module-alsa-sink" line. However, that
takes away hotplug support, trashes your latencies and generally will
speed of global warming!

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net         ICQ# 11060553
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