Tux

...making Linux just a little more fun!

RealPlayer not playing well with others

Mike Orr [sluggoster at gmail.com]
Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:22:35 -0800

I just set up a Kubuntu system with RealPlayer 10.0.8.805, and it refuses to squack simultaneously with another noisemaker. It sulks silently if kaffeine/kscd/kmix is open, and silences them when it's playing. It's opening /dev/dsp directly rather than going through the sound system.

The setup wizard says, "Alsa and esound drivers are not included in this build. The OSS device used for playback can be set using the AUDIO environment variable. eg export AUDIO=/dev/dsp2." But I've used Real on Kububtu and Gentoo before without this problem.

I looked in the dialogs for an output device setting but didn't see any. KDE's sound system is usisng the "autodetect" audio device, and KInfoCenter says, "Installed drivers: type 10 ALSA emulation. Audio devices: VIA 8237 (DUPLEX)".

gxine and kaffeine will play RealAudio files, but gxine distorts the sound in an annoying way, and kaffeine crashes so frequently I forget I'm not on Windows. (It even hung the system once with gray vertical bars on the screen. I haven't seen that on Linux for years.)

Interestingly, when KMix is open Reaplayer is silent until I close KMix and restart the audio clip a few times. But if RealPlayer is running and I open KMix from the volume control in the tray, I can adjust the volume with KMIx's PCM slider.

-- 
Mike Orr <sluggoster@gmail.com>

Top    Back


Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]
Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:51:36 +0530

Hello,

On Wed, 27 Dec 2006, Mike Orr wrote:

> I just set up a Kubuntu system with RealPlayer 10.0.8.805, and it
> refuses to squack simultaneously with another noisemaker.  It sulks
> silently if kaffeine/kscd/kmix is open, and silences them when it's
> playing.  It's opening /dev/dsp directly rather than going through the
> sound system.
> 
> The setup wizard says, "Alsa and esound drivers are not included in
> this build.  The OSS device used for playback can be set using the
> AUDIO environment variable. eg export AUDIO=/dev/dsp2."  But I've used
> Real on Kububtu and Gentoo before without this problem.

There is a package called "alsa-oss" which preloads a library that diverts these "open /dev/dsp" calls. There is probably some way to enable "alsa-oss-by-default" by fixing the "realplay" startup script, but in any case you can use the command

	aoss realplay &
This will start RealPlayer using alsa devices. As long as you don't close this app it will handle all requests to play the "real" mime types.

> Interestingly, when KMix is open Reaplayer is silent until I close
> KMix and restart the audio clip a few times.  But if RealPlayer is
> running and I open KMix from the volume control in the tray, I can
> adjust the volume with KMIx's PCM slider.

I haven't found a solution to this one (except to not use KMix!).

Hope this helps,

Kapil. --


Top    Back