ALSA aoss TeamSpeak doesn't work

[fizgiged]

I am unable to use the latest TeamSpeak2RC2 with my game, Unreal Tournament 2004, because of the way sound device access is coded. I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop with an Intel 82801CA-ICH3 sound card, which has only one playback + capture device.

$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [I82801CAICH3 ]: ICH - Intel 82801CA-ICH3
Intel 82801CA-ICH3 at 0xd800, irq 11

$ cat /proc/asound/pcm
00-00: Intel ICH : Intel 82801CA-ICH3 : playback 1 : capture 1
00-01: Intel ICH - MIC ADC : Intel 82801CA-ICH3 - MIC ADC : capture 1

I am using ALSA 1.0.4. Both ut2004 & TeamSpeak work separately.
When TeamSpeak starts up, it takes complete control of my soundcard via /dev/dsp, and there is no way to start my game with sound.

I think if TeamSpeak used raw file descriptors instead of 'FILE *' handles for audio i/o, I could preload the libaoss.so library and use ALSA's dmix plugin to share the audio device with my game and TeamSpeak. Please consider this in RC3.

If you know of another fix, or if I've got this all completely backwards, please let me know.

Thank you for your time.

References:
http://www.mail-archive.com/alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net/msg13050.html
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=34

[LifeRow]

I got Nforce2 sound alsa 1.0.3c and kernel 2.6.3.
Dmix didn't work too well for me. Now I use arts in KDE that also supports multiple streams on one card. As sound input device in Arts control (KDE control center) choose alsa as sound driver. Also don't forget to enable full duplex.

Then just start TS with artsdsp (it makes application use arts for sound) and also your game game with artsdsp. Most of the games have sound that way and TS works aswell. One exception was Enemy Territory. I need to run that with artsdsp -m et and then the sound in game works. I also tried ut2004 demo and it works with TS aswell.
I can even simultaniously run xmms (with arts plugin) and litsen to some music while having sound in game and in TS.

[fizgiged]

Thanks for the tip. artsd fixed me up!

First I run the artsd server:
$ artsd -F 6 -S 256 -d

Then I run TeamSpeak:
$ artsdsp -m TeamSpeak

Then Unreal:
$ artsdsp -m ut2004

Thanks!

[LifeRow]

Great !

Now keep fragin in Linux :)

Next week I'm getting new gfx card (radeon 9600pro) and UT2004. I hope ATI video drivers work fine in linux.

[fizgiged]

May I suggest an NVIDIA card instead. I've used both the high-end ATI and NVIDIA cards for OpenGL work, and I have had better experiences with NVIDIA over ATI. This is especially true under Linux, because of their top notch XFree86 driver support. The PNY cards are very nice.

[LifeRow]

Yeah I know NVIDIAs rule on Linux. I got one right now, but it's sucky fx 5200.
As new cards I had two in mind:
Nvidia fx 5700U and radeon 9600 pro
I could only afford radeon, so I could also afford ut2004. I hope there isn't linux drier hell on ATi waiting for me ;)


May I suggest an NVIDIA card instead. I've used both the high-end ATI and NVIDIA cards for OpenGL work, and I have had better experiences with NVIDIA over ATI. This is especially true under Linux, because of their top notch XFree86 driver support. The PNY cards are very nice.

[Thetargos]

Depending on your distro, the 9600 can prove to be difficult to set up, especially if you use a 2.6 kernel (past 2.6.6)

[kommerck]

ARTS is the very last option because it consumes a lot of resources and I don't get smooth framerates while using arts. However using DMIX with ALSA doesn't make any problems, and I've already got to work Wine and Cedega with DMIX. Unfortunately starting TeamSpeak with AOSS doesn't produce any sound and my mic and headphones can't be unmuted. Is there really no other way to get TeamSpeak work with AOSS?
I've got only an integrated Intel sound chip, and I have only one playback/capture device, so the /dev/adsp trick doesn't work.

[volumen1]

I too, would like to use TeamSpeak and Cedega at the same time. I'd also like to do this without using arts or esd, becuase these both seem to introduce a little bit of audio delay for me. I'm currently using Alsa for everything else and have been happy with Alsa, but I'm open to other options. In fact, I actually bought a license for OSS, but I was unable to figure out how to use the virtual mixer (if that is, indeed, what I need to do).

When I run TeamSpeak through "aoss", my Microphone and Speaker/Headphone show up as muted. However, in alsamixer, nothing shows up as muted.

I'm using Alsa 1.0.8-r1 and TeamSpeak 2.0.32.60-r3 (both from Gentoo's portage tree).

Thanks, in advance, for any help!

[opac]

buy a soundcard with emu10k1 chipset and do yourself a favor. Those can do hardware mixing and you will not need the (sadly still a tad user unfriendly) software mixing that is avaliable for linux.

[kommerck]

And what should do laptop users? ;)
Aoss crashes with Teamspeak, however teamspeak works with artsdsp, which itself works with dmix. Note that running a game via artsdsp too may cause sound delays and lags, so if the game supports alsa output use that (or preload custom openal library for openal games without alsa support)
See also http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1705&forum=6