ALSA dmix not enabled by default for usb sound devices

[fatejudger]

After updating a few days ago I found that I am no longer able to mix sounds together anymore. Even though KDE and Xine are told to use ALSA, they still won't play sounds at the same time, which leads me to believe that ALSA's dmix is at fault.

Distro: Kubuntu - Dapper (With latest updates)
Sound Card: Audigy 2 NX (External USB)

Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'alsa'; however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Known issue for usb sound devices.

Upstream has not enabled dmix by default for usb sound devices, and it's too late in Dapper's release cycle to test this change. Look for it in Eft.

[fatejudger (fatejudger)]

 I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for the life of me. Enabled dmix manually and it works great now. Looking forward to it being enabled by default in Edgy. Thanks for the comment.

[Gintautas Miliauskas (gintas)]

I would appreciate it if you could tell me how to work around this problem manually. Perhaps it would be useful to others who stumble upon this bug.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Use the following ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.!defaults
{
type plug
slave.pcm mixer
}

pcm.mixer
{
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave
{
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
}
}

ctl.mixer
{
type hw
card 0
}

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Sorry, the previous comment should be amended to read:

pcm.!default
{
...

instead of:

pcm.!defaults
{
...

[Gasc Ludovic (gmludo)]

I have a Kubuntu 6.10 edgy, and I have the same problem with usb audio card, it's necessary to activate dmix manually.

Do you think that this bug will be fixed for Kubuntu 7.04 ?

Thanks for your response.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Many usb audio devices in my experience do not perform well with dsnoop and/or dmix, thus is it quite improbable that 7.04 will not ship with dmixed/dsnooped usb-audio.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Many usb audio devices in my experience do not perform well with dsnoop and/or dmix, thus is it quite improbable that 7.04 will ship with dmixed/dsnooped usb-audio.

[Gasc Ludovic (gmludo)]

It's true that last year I had some sound problems with dmix, but now with edgy, I have no problems with my 3 usb audio devices + dmix.
It's my little experience, nevertheless are you sure that it's always a problem ?
Maybe is it possible to activate only the usb audio devices that are been tested by the community ?

Thanks for your response.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Currently the configuration files cannot filter by {sub,}{vendor,device}, so no, it is currently not possible to automatically filter community-tested usb audio devices.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

http://adhd.irule.net/~crimsun/alsa-lib_1.0.13-1ubuntu3.debdiff

[Joel Parker (jjkp)]

Thank you!

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Available in current Feisty.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

cf. bug 104130

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

alsa-lib (1.0.14-1ubuntu1) gutsy; urgency=low

  * Merge from Debian unstable, remaining changes:
    - debian/control: Adhere to DebianMaintainerField,
    - debian/patches/*.dpatch: Remove - incorporated into upstream,
    - debian/rules: Pass --with-plugindir=\$${prefix}/lib/alsa-lib \
      to configure targets (Debian #428334).
  * New upstream version fixes LP: #33736, LP: #97004.

alsa-lib (1.0.14-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * Patch management switched to quilt. This is more comfortable.

  [ Jordi Mallach ]
  * Bump shlibs to 1.0.14, as new symbols have been added.

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc4-2) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Jordi Mallach ]
  * debian/control:
    - add XS-Vcs-Browser and XS-Vcs-Svn headers.
    - Build-Depend on gcc-multilib only on the available architectures
      (thanks Frank Lichtenheld; closes: #424310).

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc4-1) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * New upstream release candidate.
  * Added gcc-multilib to Build-Depends. Thanks Bastian Blank and Matthias
    Klose. (closes: #422513)

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc3-2) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Jordi Mallach ]
  * debian/control: fix typo which broke hppa build (closes: #420999).

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc3-1) experimental; urgency=low

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * New upstream release candidate.

alsa-lib (1.0.14~rc1-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * New upstream release candidate.

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * Added arch armel to libasound. (closes: #408766)

alsa-lib (1.0.13-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  [ Elimar Riesebieter ]
  * Added XS-X-Vcs-Svn field in control.
  * Make recording sound on Thinkpad t20 with chip Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24
    work (closes: #410863)
  * Urgency medium to serve this feature to etch users. This is fixed in 1.0.14
    version and doesn't need be patched there.

 -- Daniel T Chen <email address hidden> Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:48:21 -0400

[Kevin Krumwiede (kjkrum)]

This bug (or one that manifests in exactly the same way) still exists in alsa-lib (1.0.14-1ubuntu7) on Gutsy. Should I reopen this or start a new report?

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

All usb audio devices are dmixed by default except for blacklisted ones. Please read the top of /usr/share/alsa/cards/USB-Audio.conf for more information.