[ILUG] Multiplexing sounds

[Niall O Broin]

I'm trying to get sound working right with xchat, so that I can have xchat
running amd my colleagues can get my attention although I mightn't be
looking at the xchat window. I have xchat set up so that it uses esdplay to
play a sound but sometimes I hear nothing. A little testing reveals that
sometimes esdplay dies with  /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy  when I run
it from a shell. This happens when nothing else is playing any sounds, and
I've noticed that it seems to happen after a console beep has played and
I've also observed that when esdplay is not able to play, freeamp won't play
either. What gives here ? It seems that I won't be able to have freeamp
playing and hear an IRC ping because when freeamp is playing, I always get
the above error message from esdplay. Can't the sound driver handle two
sources or what ?

Save me from having to use my Mac for IRC - two screens is already enough on
my desk.


Niall