2009/5/28 Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik(a)iki.fi>:
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:08:37AM -0700, john wendel wrote:
> Kevin Kofler wrote:
> >It makes sound just work, without apps fighting for the sound device (or
> >multiple incompatible sound servers all trying to "fix" this fighting
for
> >the sound device). No more annoyances like games failing to play sound
> >because some GUI event sound was still being played when they tried opening
> >the sound device. (I've seen, or rather heard, that happen way too often in
> >pre-PulseAudio times.)
> >
> >Most sound cards don't do mixing in hardware. A few do support it, but the
> >ALSA driver doesn't. Only few sound cards can do it and have ALSA support
> >for it. So PulseAudio is a mixing solution which works for everyone.
> >
> > Kevin Kofler
> >
>
> Strange, I've never had a sound card that didn't have a hardware mixer.
> And the on-board Intel hd audio that I'm using now does too. I don't
> think PulseAudio is evil, it just doesn't bring anything to the party.
>
You're mixing up things :-)
"Mixer" usually means the device/application you use to control volume level
settings.
In this context "hardware mixing" meant mixing up multiple audio streams
(from different applications) and all of them playing at once.
Your on-board Intel hd audio cannot mix audio streams in hardware.. I think.
Some Creative cards can do that.
Most of the modern Intel HDA cards _are_ capable of mixing streams. I
have owned one such card since 2007. Also most of the hi-end boards
today support multiple streams. However I am not sure whether
pulseaudio can stream two different streams to these sound cards and
let it playback in two different devices. A very common situation
would be something like a skype call on a headphone without
interrupting music playback on external speakers.
--
Suvayu
Open source is the future. It sets us free.