As I understand it, typically in linux only one thing can be accessing the
sound device at one time.  This means that you can get strange noises from
your display manager or you can get xmms to play an mp3, but not both at
the same time.

Now there is a way around this.  If you use esd (Enlightened Sound Daemon
IIRC) as the 'device' that all of your other applications like xmms use
for output, then esd can mix all the various sound streams together and
present just one sound stream to the sound card, thus allowing your system
beeps, display manager sounds, and xmms to all play nice together at the
same time.

Jeff

On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Robert P. Goldman wrote:

> As a follow-up, can someone explain for a linux user of very little
> brain what goes on with the sound drivers?
>
> I run KDE and periodically it seems to grab up the sound card with ITS
> library, and then XMMS complains that it can't get access to the dsp.
>
> Is there any way to resolve this problem, or do I just have to live
> with it?  It seems like even warning beeps can cause this problem.
>
> R
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