Mixed Sound with ARTS and ALSA

A small HOWTO found at http://wiki.splitbrain.org/alsa and which I edited according to my own views. It explains to configure your system to play sounds from various applications simultanously. Think of applications like XMMS, GAIM, MPlayer and Firefox (with Flashplugin).

ALSA comes with a method to mix multiple sound streams which is called dmix. ALSA-enabled applications should be able to all access the device at the same time when it is set up. To do this you'll need to set up either a system-wide /etc/asound.conf or a ~/.asoundrc file in your home directory.

Here is an example /etc/asound.conf which I took from http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=Dmix+Kde+-+arts%2C+ESD+and+SDL+quick+and+dirty+HOWTO . It works for me, but you might also want to have a look at the rest of this page.

pcm.ossmix {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 1027       # must be unique!
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"   # you cannot use a "plug"
                       # device here, darn.
        period_time 0
	period_size 1024
	buffer_size 4096
        #format "S32_LE"
        #periods 128   # dito.
        rate 44100     # with rate 8000 you *will* 
                       # hear, if ossmix is used :)
    }
    bindings {
        0 0            # from 0 => to 0
        1 1            # from 1 => to 1
    }
}
pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "ossmix"
}
# mixer0 like above
ctl.mixer0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}

The instructions at http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=asym are the source of what follows on the rest of this page. If the above does not work for you, you might want to take a look at the story below.

This is what /etc/asound.conf could look like also:

#asym fun start here. we define one pcm device called "dmixed"
pcm.dmixed {
    ipc_key 1025
    type dmix
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"
        period_time 0
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 8192
        rate 48000
    }
}

#one called "dsnooped" for capturing
pcm.dsnooped {
    ipc_key 1026
    type dsnoop
    slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
}

#and this is the real magic
pcm.asymed {
    type asym
    playback.pcm "dmixed"
    capture.pcm "dsnooped"
}

#a quick plug plugin for above device to do the converting magic. saves
#typing when settng the pcm name in an alsa app
pcm.pasymed {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "asymed"
}

#a ctl device to keep xmms happy
ctl.pasymed {
    type hw
    card 0
}

#here we try to point the aoss script to our asymed device
pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "asymed"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}

#this sets the default device
pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "asymed"
}

It's pretty much the same as decribed in the given link. However, a problem is to get applications to work with it that do not support ALSA.

The solution to the above mentioned problems is to use a sound daemon, like KDE's ARTS.

Arts needs to be started on login. You can do that for instance from your ~/.xsession file. Just add the following line before your the where your windowmanager gets started:

/opt/kde/bin/artsd -b 16 -r 48000 -a alsa -D asymed &

To make firefox use the ARTS daemon we use a library wrapper called artsdsp - so for running Firefox with ARTS just run the following command:

artsdsp firefox

To be sure it works install the Flash Plugin and try any Flash animation - like this cute kitten. If you don't hear sound then something is wrong.

For xmms, you need to select the aRts-Output as output plugin in your Preferences.

Also easy - in the Sound preferences tab, select Automatic as the Sound Method.

The MPlayer documentation says there is an arts driver. Running

mplayer -ao help

shows something like this:

Available audio output drivers:
 mpegpes	Mpeg-PES audio output
 oss	OSS/ioctl audio output
 alsa9	ALSA-0.9.x audio output
 esd	EsounD audio output
 sdl	SDLlib audio output
 null	Null audio output
 pcm	RAW PCM/WAVE file writer audio output
 plugin	Plugin audio output

Now the dmix feature configured above comes in handy again. We just use the asymed device which is able to mix multiple sources. So it's possible to have both - ARTS with multiple Soundsources and MPlayer - accessing the same ALSA device.

Just add this to the ~/.mplayer/config

  ao=alsa9:asymed            #or ao=alsa1x ...
  srate=48000