HDA ATI SB (Realtek ALC861-VD), skype and lack of sound mixing

[RRH]

Hello.

I've got one problem driving me mad. I have the newest skype for linux (beta) and sound card mentioned above. I have no pulseaudio. Pure Kubuntu Karmic 9.10 sound configuration. Sound's working, microphone's working. But when while skyping some sound occur (music, notification, etc) the input channel is immediately blocked. I tried various solutions given in ubuntu official(?) support for skype but they all failed. So I have to issue "sudo alsa force-reload" to regain my input. Very irritating.

So my question is how to enable sound mixing so that I could play music during skyping, have sound notification and all of this without any alsa magic or hard reboot?

thanks in advance

[lmilano]

Re: HDA ATI SB (Realtek ALC861-VD), skype and lack of sound mixing

The root of the problem is that Skype doesn't use the KDE sound system, but it "talks to the iron" directly instead. The only way around that _I_ know is to use Pulseaudio. I have found that Pulse + KDE is very unstable with my hardware, but using latest Pulse from a PPA works ok. Here are the details:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3108441.0

Basically, if Pulse is present, it will mix sounds from both KDE and non KDE apps (in part thanks to KDE great sound framework, that accepts Pulse as a backend). Hope this helps!

[RRH]

Re: HDA ATI SB (Realtek ALC861-VD), skype and lack of sound mixing

OK, I installed PA but can't get my microphone in Skype to work. Of course I set (or it was set) to pulseaudio in configuration. Maybe it is due to this mess in my multimedia preferences:
http://imagebin.ca/view/CFDuspsB.html
http://imagebin.ca/view/Vy-aPv.html

how can I remove these reduntant entries?

[lmilano]

Re: HDA ATI SB (Realtek ALC861-VD), skype and lack of sound mixing

I think they are fine, devices are used in the order they appear. You can move Pulse to the top if you want, play a bit with the priority.

However, have you installed and run the pavucontrol ? You should be able to select the mic device from that application (I did, and it worked fine, I had exactly the same problem in skype).

[RRH]

Re: HDA ATI SB (Realtek ALC861-VD), skype and lack of sound mixing

Unfortunately your solution doesn't work for me. I was listening to music and then I wanted to skype with my friend. But input channel was blocked. Of course I have pulseaudio set both in multimedia tab (KDE preferences) and skype. I had to issue:

sudo alsa force-reload
killall pulseaudio
pulseaudio -D

After that (and after nudging microphone volume meter in pavucontrol) I could skype.

But that's not all. I quit all application that can give sound (choqok, kopete - notificatoins) and started skyping. Unfortunately the input channel (mic) is sometimes blocked in random time so I have to issue the commands mentioned above.

It's very irritating. Is there any solution that could help me?

[RRH]

Re: HDA ATI SB (Realtek ALC861-VD), skype and lack of sound mixing

can't anyone help me?