alsa + mpd + flash sound fix
So I’ve had a problem for a while and haven’t bothered looking into it until now. When a web page loads flash with sound, it either: a) doesn’t play if mpd is playing or b) prevents mpd from playing sound unless I close firefox. Obviously this was an extremely irritating behavior. I thought it was something to do with flash using the wrong sound driver, but it was right.
I finally actually looked into it. The fix is quite simple and painless. I had to configure mpd to use dmix (the alsa software mixer). All of the instructions are clearly laid out on the mpd wiki. Enjoy! (NOTE: For those unfamiliar with mpd it is music player daemon, my music player of choice. Check out their wiki for more information).
As an added bonus, I just learned RIT has a debian mirror: http://mirror.rit.edu! Thanks to the RITLUG, I can now fetch my upgrades much, much quicker.
I have a debian mirror, asshole!
http://www.robertpeaslee.com/debian/
http://robertp.csh.rit.edu/debian
Take your pick, if your server is on the user rack I can guarantee it is faster than the RITLUG mirror ;) (Although I can’t promise mine is as comprehensive as theirs.)
Ha, I completely forgot about your mirror! Unfortunately, no amd64 :(
So, today I did some more digging and found an easier way to accomplish the same task via the Gentoo wiki (http://gentoo-wiki.com/ALSA/Software_dmix_Configurations#MPD) in /etc/mpd.conf, edit the alsa output to match:
audio_output {
type “alsa”
name “Sound Card”
options “dev=dmixer”
device “plug:dmix”
}