[mythtv-users] Squeezesoft prevents audio in .24

[Gabe Rubin]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard <jyavenard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> On 17 November 2010 15:36, Gabe Rubin <gaberubin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I may just create a workaround by binding a key to the remote that
>> will start and stop the squeezeslave player.  Learning and configuring
>> Pulse is a little more difficult than what I want to do and may add
>> more issues (unless you think it is relatively straightforward).
>>
>> Plus, I think squeezesoft requires use of alsa.
>
> If it does, configure it to use the "pulse" ALSA device ; it's designed for
> it
>
> Pulse has some downside compare to pure ALSA. You can't do passthrough, all
> audio will be resampled etc..
> but it was designed for the purpose of being able to allow more than one
> application to play sound at a time.
>
> There will often be some sync and latency issues, but it's not too bad
> anymore with 0.24.
>
> Pulse is still using ALSA.
>

These downsides seem pretty big to me.  I prefer to have passthrough
and non resampled audio.  I am not trying to play audio from different
programs simultaneously.  I just want softsqueeze running idle in the
background and to not use the soundcard until it is actually playing
music.  It looks like that is not possible based on the way
softsqueeze is written.

>>
>> >
>> > I can't see how this ever worked before... ALSA requires exclusive
>> > access to
>> > the hardware, if it's opened by one application, it can't be used by
>> > another
>> > ; that's why you have sound server like pulse audio.
>> >
>> Don't know what to say.  It worked.  I could not play from squeezesoft
>> and myth simultaneously, but the two never seemed to conflict with
>> each other.
>>
>
> Did you upgrade squeezesoft lately?
> It seems that it keeps the audio card open even when not playing which is
> not great and is what's causing those issues.
>
> That's the problem: squeezesoft keeps the audio card open, and it's not
> available for anyone else to use. You will have the same issues with other
> program (mplayer, vlc etc..) they won't be able to play audio while
> squeezesoft is using the audio device.
>
> JY

Yeah, as I explained above, I think this is the issue.  So its not a
myth problem but a softsqueeze issue.  I have not upgraded softsqueeze
lately, but I will downgrade because I have used all sorts of
different versions.  I will say that getting audio out of myth used to
sometimes be a crapshoot since I upgraded my system a few months ago
(a complete rebuild with only my database and recordings carrying
over), so maybe that was the problem before.