Bug#373277: Rhythmbox no longer releases audio device when paused

[Martin Schwenke]

>>>>> "Sven" == Sven Arvidsson <sa at whiz.se> writes:

    Sven>       "Are you using ALSA with dmix?

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

    Sven>       gstreamer (and hence rhythmbox) will use dmix if it is
    Sven>       setup and should allow multiple sources using the
    Sven>       sound card.

Combined with this text on the above page:

  NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup
  dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support
  hw mixing.

and a whole bunch of time to check things out, it appears the answer
is "yes".  It seems I don't have a choice.

Before this I didn't even know what dmix was.  I still don't care
though - I just want my system to behave sensibly!

[So, now my rant is no longer directed at you as Debian maintainer of
 rhythmbox...  :-]

    Sven>       The problem is likely your other apps that are the
    Sven>       problem not rhythmbox/gstreamer, some proprietary apps
    Sven>       like Skype use the old OSS interface which
    Sven>       "hogs/steals" the sound card.  Not much that alsa can
    Sven>       do about that, see: [...]

I don't use Skype and I don't even have OSS compatibility in my kernel!

If I could understand what value I'm getting from dmix I might be
happy using it.  However, at the moment all I want to be able to do it
play a single audio stream.

This suggests that my sound card (ICH6) can only do 48KHz natively:

  $ grep Hz /proc/asound/card0/codec97#0/ac97#0-0
  PCM front DAC    : 48000Hz
  PCM ADC          : 48000Hz

Does dmix resample for me so I can play my 44.1KHz OGG files?  This is
pretty unclear to me...

Thanks...

peace & happiness,
martin