[MPlayer-users] mplayer and alsa9/dmix

[Florian Schmidt]

On Fri, 18 Apr 2003 20:03:30 -0700
Corey Hickey <bugfood-ml at fatooh.org> wrote:

> There was another post like this somewhat recently. I quote my
> response to that mail:

Oh, i searched the archive, but didn't find it. My bad.

> 
> I don't know much about alsa (the docs tend to confuse me), but I do
> know that mplayer can output to any existing alsa PCM. For example, if
> I define a custom PCM in my .asoundrc called blah, then I can use that
> with mplayer -ao alsa9:blah
> 
> In your case, this might be as simple as -ao alsa9:plug:dmix.
> 
> Hopefully that'll be enough for you to work from.

Well, i tried that, of course. I repeat the errors, i get once again
(it's always the same, whenever it try to use a custom pcm device:

mplayer -ao alsa9:dmix song.mp3

mplayer -ao alsa9:plug:dmix song.mp3


See my .asoundrc for the definition of the following two pcm devices,
but they are basically equivalent to alsa9:dmix and alsa9:plug:dmix

mplayer -ao alsa9:mixed song.mp3

mplayer -a0 alsa9:plugger song.mp3


Here's again the relevant output for each of these commands:

Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm:mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
=======================================================================
=== Checking audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/16bit ->
44100Hz/2ch/16bit... AF_pre: af format: 2 bps, 2 ch, 44100 hz, little
endian signed int AF_pre: 44100Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
alsa-init: testing and bugreports are welcome.
alsa-init: requested format: 44100 Hz, 2 channels, Signed 16-bit
(Little-Endian) alsa-init: soundcard set to mixed
alsa-init: unable to set periodsize: Invalid argument  # <---- this line
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.


I forgot to mention, that this works with "aplay":

aplay -Dplugger sound.wav

creates the desired result (being able to run several instances of
this commands simultaneously).. So i wonder, if my setup is wrong
somehow, or if mplayer is broken. Maybe it's a bug in alsa, too. I'd
like to find out.. Maybe my soundcard driver just hates pcm devices?

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