On Friday 04 January 2002 01:58 pm, you wrote: > As a follow-up, can someone explain for a linux user of very little > brain what goes on with the sound drivers? like everything in linux its all in layers, first you have the kernel modules, on top of that userland programs try to connect to the dsp considering that the kernel modules all loaded fine and you are good to go here is how it plays out. AppA talks directly to /dev/dsp to produce sounds doing that will lock /dev/dsp untill it is done (*) not only that but this also requires AppA to be able to interface directly with /dev/dsp now the bright people in the baazar prodoced middle-men programs(artsd, esd etc. ) these programs connect to /dev/dsp locking it, but in exchange they allow multiple Apps that are aware of this middle-man to connect at once. additionally this allows these apps not to need to know about /dev/dsp and how to play with it. (meaning that in an integrated environment like KDE or gnome you can cut down on the wheel reinvention) > 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. did you compile xmms with artsd support? -munir