[PLUG] realplay

[AthlonRob]

On Sat, 2003-02-15 at 21:46, Bill Spears wrote:
> When I execute realplay, the real audio window pops up and then I get
> this error message:
> Cannot open the audio device. Another application may be using it.
> 
> Anybody know what this is all about?

Are you in KDE or GNOME, by any chance?  If so, odds are you have a
sound server (Arts or ESD) taking control over your soundcard... so
things like RealPlayer that don't utilize the sound server are out of
luck when they try and access it.

Look through RP's settings to see if it can use ESD or ARTS by default -
I don't think it can, though..

If you're in GNOME with ESD, you can try running esddsp realplay, or if
you're in KDE with ARTS, you can run artsdsp realplay... the *dsp
programs load a library that forces everything the program tries to send
to /dev/dsp into the sound server, so things without sound server
support work with the sound server.

The reason the sound server is there is you cannot, most of the time,
play more than one audio stream out a soundcard at once.  The sound
servers mix different audio streams together, turning them into one
stream, so you can effectively play more than one stream at once. 
Problems with them, however, include trying to get them working with
apps that don't support them and the lag they introduce, which can be
seen if you watch the visualization in XMMS, or if you are one of those
audio master peoples.  :-)

Rob