I have amarok 1.1.1 installed with gstreamer 0.8.7
I have found that using gstreamer both with alsasink which uses huge amounts of cpu (see other post) and ossssink that after you press stop the sound card is not released, I again tested gstreamer using gst-launch filesrc location=filename.mp3 ! mad ! alsasink and it was fine, when the song ended gstreamer exited and released the sound card.
However with amarok it seems to be hanging on to it, I am wondering if its something to do with crossfade, but i have not had time to test this.
Its a problem also with the artsd.
The xine engine is fine however, but amarok does not put crossfade into that which is sad.

Caveman
Devs: you can contact me at commscentral(AT)gmail(DOT)com

There is no need to "release" the sound device. Instead, you must configure your alsa with a mixing facility, which lets multiple applications output sound at the same time.

If you do not have hardware-mixing available (e.g. with SBLive), you need to install the dmix plugin for alsa, and specify "dmix" as device in the engine settings.

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin

Hi,

maybe I don't get the point but let me publish my experiences:
First I'd like to say that I've been using the same PC during all the tests

When I started using amaroK (release 1.0.2) I compiled amaroK to use xine-lib and arts. At this time I could switch between thoses output engines as often as I wanted, both worked.
Not beeing a fan of arts and wanting to try gstreamer I compiled amaroK that way (release 1.1.1) and used gstreamer as output engine.
AFAIR at that point my problem started:
alsasink used all CPU power it could get and osssink gave me disturbing clicks on song change. So I tried to use xine-lib again. But every time I tried to switch to it I received an error message (xine was unable to initialize audio-drivers).
From that time on I had been working with amaroK CVS, hoping this will fix my problems, but it didn't. Latest CVS also gives me an amaroK crash after that error message

After hearing of the dmix tip I tried it, and hey! I can use xine-lib again!

So I think there must be a problem in the gstreamer engine because it seams to not release the audio device and I definitely don't agree if you say there's no need to release the sound device.
Or didn't I get you right?

Another happening:
I stopped playback and wanted to quickly play a WAV using aplay, but it didn't work. I had to quit amaroK and I got it played. Looks like "there's no need to release the sound device", too.

So what do YOU say?

Regards,
Andreas (who's glad to hear sound via xine-lib again

Regarding the changing of engine. I had the same problem, but chose "No Engine" first, aplied, then chosing the xine engine worked.

amair wrote:

After hearing of the dmix tip I tried it, and hey! I can use xine-lib again!

So I think there must be a problem in the gstreamer engine because it seams to not release the audio device and I definitely don't agree if you say there's no need to release the sound device.
Or didn't I get you right?

Yeah, it appears you misunderstood something. You can use dmix with GStreamer's alsasink too.

The sound device cannot be released with a crossfading engine. And again, there is no need to do that, since dmix allows all applications to use the device at the same time.

Post edited by: markey, at: 2004/11/05 02:22

The sound device cannot be released with a crossfading engine. And again, there is no need to do that, since dmix allows all applications to use the device at the same time.

Post edited by: markey, at: 2004/11/05 02:22

Fair enough, I have a feeling that it would be something like that.
I have got dmix running and its all fixed. !!! I really need to get a new sound card as well.

Thanks for your reply.

Caveman

I should have added.

Dmix works great wil alsa, but and alsasink, however it wont work on oss because thats direct use of the device.

Caveman