[alsa-devel] [Vorbis-dev] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?)

[xiphmont at xiph.org]

> I can, now, set it to dev=default manually but what this means is that
> libao-1.1.0 by default kills alsa default software mixing.

The only alternative is to have any attempt at playing surround always
fail to play more than stereo on a default setup.  The bug reports
about _that_ prompted the change to the current behavior.

> These days
> everybody seems to have regressed to using a soundserver again anyway

Part of the reason for that is that ALSA provides so precious little
in the way of programmatic configuration discovery.  So far as I can
tell, each and every user gets to script/configure his own setup, and
then also explicitly configure the applications what to do.
Applications can't even tell if a default setup is in use.  It's all
plug-n-pray.

If that's not the case, I'd love to hear about it. I agree the current
behavior sucks.

Monty