Re: [SLUG] FC 5 sound problem

["Grant Parnell" <gripz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, October 19, 2007 8:55 am, Luke Vanderfluit wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I know theres some sound experts on this list.
> Im running kernel 2.6.18-1.2239.fc5
> Realplayer 10.0.8
>
> I have this problem where I try running realplayer after Ive used the
> sound device through another application (usually through opera).
> I get a
> /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 'Cannot open the audio device. Another application may be using it.'
> \______________
>
>
> I cant get the machine to release the sound card.
> This is a recurring problem. At times I can kill artsd. Other times
> there is no artsd running.
>
> The only way Ive gotten my sound back is rebooting.
> But that is so reminiscent of windows I dont want to go there any more.
>
> Any suggestions?

Well SOMETHING is obviously hanging onto the sound device. If you're prone
to having applications directly access the sound device you're likely to
run into this problem. There's a bunch of sound system LAYERS available
for GNOME/KDE depending on what stage of evolution your system's at. Try
esound-daemon (esd) on FC5. Then you change the apps to use this sound
system layer which is sort of like a software mixer thus allowing multiple
applications (and the desktop's bells and whistles) to access the sound
device concurrently. The situation has drastically improved in Fedora Core
6 and Fedora 7. You should also try turning off your GNOME/KDE's desktop
sound effects to help eliminate that problem.

I'm not an expert on desktop audio but there's a lot of stuff there to
play with.. OSS, ESD, Arts, Jack, ALSA (and stuff like ALSA's ESD
emulation), Network Sound System (or was it Network Sound Daemon?)

Also at a lower level... go to the command prompt and check out the fuser
and lsof commands. something like "fuser /dev/mixer", "lsof |grep dev
|less"

-- 
---<GRiP>---
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today!

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