[mythtv-users] [OT] Play MP3s and watching TV a the same time ??

[Steve Hill]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Seth Lake wrote:

> Thanksgiving day, football is on the TV.  Does anyone actually listen 
> to football games?  Not in my family.  It would be sweet to be able to 
> watch the TV and listen to XMMS at the same time, but for some reason 
> linux doesn't seem to be able to play more than one audio stream (a 
> serious deficiencey when compared to M$) even with ALSA.  anything i can 
> do to get more than 1 stream out of my audio card?

Linux does support mixing of audio streams, but it's not compatable with 
the way Myth talks to the sound card - if all the software you're using 
used esound then it would mix on the fly, but that's not really suitable 
for playing movies since it adds another layer of processing which can 
cause the sound to lose sync with the video.  An alternative is to use a 
Soundblaster Live card which will mix a large number of channels (32 I 
think) in hardware.

-- 

 - Steve                                             http://www.nexusuk.org/

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