scratchy sounds

[Jack Coates]

On Tue, 2002-08-20 at 09:37, Thomas Schönhoff wrote:
> James Tappin wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 	I've been noticing a strange audio behaviour that seems to be specific
> > to xfce.
> 
> > Any ideas what might be going on?
> > 	James
> > 
> Hello all,
> 
> differently to James audio experiencies I can hear everything......:-)
> 
> Unfortunately xfounds scratching like wrinting with chalk at board, it 
> like going to be insane....:-(
> At least when enabling sounds everything seemed to be fine for a minute, 
> but now I have to disable sounds again......
> 
> 
> I am using XFCE 3.8.16, command within xfsound is set to "internal" (no 
> big difference to "xfplay 2>/dev/null" !!!)
> 
> Every available sound file scratches the same way, if switching to KDE 
> or Gnome everything sounds fine (of course only for debugging reason !). 
> If playing CDs, everything is fine !
> 
> Does somebody know what is going on !?
> 
> Thomas
> 
I don't know what's going on, but I had the same problem with Alsa and
an ESS1371 card. I switched to ESD as part of an effort to get network
transparency for an xterm, and what do you know, sound is suddenly
perfect. Alsa was also unable to multiplex sounds, so alert bells
wouldn't happen if XMMS was playing, for instance. I added esd to my
xfwmrc file.

Before any Alsa zealots fire up their flamethrowers, let me point out
that this is on Mandrake 8.2 and who knows just how good Alsa may have
sounded had I taken the time to learn the history of Unix sound systems,
find out why Alsa is the best thing since sliced bread, download the
latest beta and compile it and configure it :-)
-- 
Jack Coates
Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture...