2009/3/8 Tom Horsley tom.horsley@att.net:
On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:23:33 +0100 Kevin Kofler wrote:
Try playing sound from 2 or more apps at once on hardware with no hardware mixing (or with hardware mixing not supported by the ALSA driver), it just won't work without PulseAudio (or dmix, which has its own share of compatibility problems).
Then try making sense out of 2 or more apps playing at once and wonder why anyone cares if it works or not.
Case 1) I normally play really really loud Metal or watch American crime dramas to drown out the chatterboxes in my office. I want to hear the pings of a new IM coming in, because it usually means something significant server-wise.
Case 2) I want to hear my VOIP phone ringing over the perfect noise of Rammstein.
and that's just me... there must be thousands of other legitimate use cases!