How can I get around the blocking of the sound card when outputting via ALSA?

General system Gaming, sound and video
21

Good, thanks for your effort. I will try this tomorrow.

22

I set the output to ALSA card as the backend in Strawberry and specify the K5 Pro as the device.

23

Iā€™ll most probably be here! :rofl:

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24

By default, ALSA does not support multiple sources on cards without hardware mixing and so needs dmix:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture#Dmix

(The other alternatives are to use PulseAudio or PipeWire.)

Output from multiple applications shouldnā€™t need JACK or a patchbay.

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25

Thanks @jonathon, Iā€™ll take a look at that.

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26

Thanks for your efforts @Jmagick , @jonathon , Iā€™ve decided to stick with PipeWire output for now (itā€™s a big improvement in output quality over PulseAudio anyway). I donā€™t think my hardware is good enough to show any improvement anyway.

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27

I donā€™t know about that! Thatā€™s a really nice DAC you have there.
I installed Strawberry to have a look see. I may find a better way to set this up.
I bookmark this post just in case. :slightly_smiling_face:

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28

That sounds very good, thank you @Jmagick :+1:t2:

29

Feeling kinda stupid right now! :man_facepalming:

Just set, in Strawberry, your output to Wrapper audio sink for automatically detected audio sink
That will keep Strawberry from controlling the audio. Tested it with both XFCE and Plasma desktops.
Apparently both audio sources will play through the same output. Iā€™m using a Behringer DACā€¦
should also work with your DAC. No qjackctl required.

Let me know if this doesnā€™t work for you. I didnā€™t know audio in Linux could do this. Sorry.

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30

Well, thatā€™s how I had it all along before. However, the output seems to be done only with PulseAudio, right? At least I can not directly specify my K5Pro as backend.

31

Depends, if your sound output is set to the K5Pro, your good to go. The options in Strawberry gives you a lot of options bypassing the normal audio setup. The detected audio sink is your DAC unless you have it set to something else in you sound prefs.

Does that make sense?

32

That makes perfect sense. I have the K5 Pro set as the sole output device in Pavucontrol.

33

That was my first time testing Strawberry, impressive. A lot like Clementine.
Cool to learn something new!

34

download

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35

And I finally managed to use something other than always DeaDBeeF. Strawberry can render at least as seamlessly as DeaDBeeF. Itā€™s a good alternative IMHO.

Happy New Year and always have a current ISO available :wink:

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36

Happy New Year to you too my friend! :partying_face:

That KDE plasma was a new install to test Strawberry. Always a current ISO! :+1:

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