Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?

--

Willie Matthews
matthews.willie@gmail.com

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews
<matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>
> --
>
> Willie Matthews
> matthews.willie@gmail.com
>

Jack handles multiple streams very well but it's difficult to use if
you're not willing to invest a lot of time and not all apps support
it.

I've never used pulseaudio so I cannot speak to that personally.

I also wonder what KDE is doing under the hood. I use multiple VMs all
day long - both VMWare Player and Virtualbox. I get audio from both of
those at the same time, as well as from Firefox or xine running native
in Linux, so I'm doing multiple streams and mixing them in KDE all
automatically. I've never studied how KDE does it, but empirically it
certainly can do multiple streams.

HTH,
Mark

You should check airfoil [1]. It's a multiplatform sound system but
it's not open source. Haven't actually tried it myself as pulseaudio
fits my needs.

** refs:

[1] http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews
> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>
>> --
>>
>> Willie Matthews
>> matthews.willie@gmail.com
>>
>
> Jack handles multiple streams very well but it's difficult to use if
> you're not willing to invest a lot of time and not all apps support
> it.
>
> I've never used pulseaudio so I cannot speak to that personally.
>
> I also wonder what KDE is doing under the hood. I use multiple VMs all
> day long - both VMWare Player and Virtualbox. I get audio from both of
> those at the same time, as well as from Firefox or xine running native
> in Linux, so I'm doing multiple streams and mixing them in KDE all
> automatically. I've never studied how KDE does it, but empirically it
> certainly can do multiple streams.
>
> HTH,
> Mark
>

no, I missunderstood what it is for, airfoil can only play streams
from windows or mac, the output could be linux though, but anyways it
isn't what you are looking for.

2012/2/27 Juan Diego Tascón <juantascon@gmail.com>:
> You should check airfoil [1]. It's a multiplatform sound system but
> it's not open source. Haven't actually tried it myself as pulseaudio
> fits my needs.
>
> ** refs:
>
> [1] http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/
>
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Willie Matthews
>>> matthews.willie@gmail.com
>>>
>>
>> Jack handles multiple streams very well but it's difficult to use if
>> you're not willing to invest a lot of time and not all apps support
>> it.
>>
>> I've never used pulseaudio so I cannot speak to that personally.
>>
>> I also wonder what KDE is doing under the hood. I use multiple VMs all
>> day long - both VMWare Player and Virtualbox. I get audio from both of
>> those at the same time, as well as from Firefox or xine running native
>> in Linux, so I'm doing multiple streams and mixing them in KDE all
>> automatically. I've never studied how KDE does it, but empirically it
>> certainly can do multiple streams.
>>
>> HTH,
>> Mark
>>

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
<matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?

alsa dmix

On 27/02/12 23:50, Willie Matthews wrote:

Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?


Plain ALSA? Or OSSv4? Both handle multiple audio streams just fine.

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>
> alsa dmix
>

Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.

Cheers,
Mark

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>
>> alsa dmix
>>
>
> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.

Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>>
>>> alsa dmix
>>>
>>
>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>
> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>

Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.

- Mark

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
>>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>>>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>>>
>>>> alsa dmix
>>>>
>>>
>>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>>
>> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>>
>
> Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
> suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.

GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
also by default uses PA.

Jack (according to the PA maintainers) is for professional audio processing.

And please keep in mind that PulseAudio is so much more than "multiple
audio streams". It's per-application volume control, seamlessly moving
audio streams from one audio card to another, and really easy
management of things like USB soundcards and bluetooth headsets.

dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in
my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it
will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles.

Regards.
--
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México