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Skype and sound problems

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I was doing fine running Skype, and I had a good connection with Live 365. Then someone I was talking to on Skype said I should up-date it. Now I can't get the sound to come on for either of these. I use the alsa program. Live 365 looks like it should be playing -- but no sound. The new Skype loooked like it installed OK, and it picked up all my former contacts. But the test for calling fails. It jams and I have to force it to quit. As they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But what should I do now?

jedson

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downgrade it ...

Submitted by pinniped on Wed, 2007-01-31 01:08.

You DID keep a copy of the older one, didn't you? If not, no sympathy...

I don't know if Skype had been 'stripped' - if not, you can attach gdb to it and see what routines/threads are running when it hangs. Did you test the alsa devices after your upgrade just to make sure it was still all working? Did you also check the Sky-Pee settings to make sure they didn't screw up when you upgraded?

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Sound Mixing

Submitted by georgos on Sun, 2007-02-04 04:06.

Hi there

The problem is a well known "problem" on Linux. That is, technically, only as many sound channels can be processed as the sound hardware supports. Every application that tries to play some sound needs such a channel. Some sound cards process 32 channels (i.e. mix them in hardware), but most are only able to process one (e.g. on-board chips).
So, only one application may play some sound at any time for such sound hardware, except the mixing is done in software (i.e. not hardware accelerated but calculated by the CPU).

Debian Sarge does not turn on software mixing by default, unfortunately. Debian Etch or newer Ubuntu versions shouldn't have this problem.

This article http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?title=DmixPlugin explains how to set software mixing up yourself (called DMIX in Alsa).

Good luck!
Cheers, Georg

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