xmms+arts+quake= slow performance :-(

[manly]

I just figured out how to use artsdsp so I can play mp3's through xmms and play quake 1-3 with sound. Using:

 

artsdsp -m quake3

I can sucessfully run quake3. However, sounds from within the game are slightly delayed, and the framerate goes down by 5-10 fps (which is a problem when your system only does ~30!). Under Win2K, the difference is not really noticable (Quake 3 and Winamp). Is this just an arts performance problem? Is there another sound server that has better performance? Perhaps Esd? I use KDE, so aRts is prefered.

 

Thanks!

--Andrew

[mtweidmann]

KDE is quite resource intensive, because of its many features. What I do iss to have KDE setup for every day use, and then a seperate user account just for running games in. For this account I use IceWM which uses next to no system resources. If you want you can still have the arts demon running in IceWM.

[manly]

To do some testing, I logged in using failsafe, which gives an X console and nothing else. I ran artswrapper (setuid root), and then ran xmms, using no plugins and output set to aRts. ~5% CPU usage, all from aRts. Then, I ran Quake III, and ran a timedemo, ~28 FPS. I then ran Quake III without xmms running, still through aRts. ~35 FPS, but I noticed that the sound had a slight delay. I then ran Quake normally, after killing artsd, which gave ~35 FPS, and no sound delay. Of course, that way I can't listen to my music :-(.

 

Running from within KDE seems to make little difference - I would assume that's my 256 MB chip @ work :-). Is there another way to play mp3/oggs without such a performance difference?

 

Thanks,

--Andrew

[mtweidmann]

You could try using a more basic mp3 player, but I'm not sure it'll make that much difference to be honest.

[Michel]

I believe there is an alsa-plugin for xmms....Ever tried that one???

[Guest itti]

why don't u just buy an soundblaster live 5.1 digital? it's 35 € here and your /dev/dsp will never be locked again by just one application. before i had that one i used esd, there's no way to tell quake3 to play the sound via esd i think. :(

oh yeah when using esd disable artsd

[manly]

As far as I know, the whole purpose of esd and alsa is to allow multiple sound sources to be mixed and sent to ALSA, which is in the kernel. I think ALSA can only handle one source at a time, so that's why you need esd or Arts. If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me ;-)

 

I tried using mpg123, but I had to pipe it with artsdsp, so it was even more intensive than xmms.

 

Esd doesn't support nmap, so it doesn't work with quake :-(

 

I'm confused - a Live allows more than one program to open it up for access? In other words, ALSA can run in multiple instances?

 

I had a thought. Some cards allow you to create /dev/dsp, /dev/dsp1, etc which all go to the same card, and then the card does the mixing. How do I know if this is possible with my card? How do I set it up?

 

Thanks,

Andrew

[DragonMage]

Not exactly.. it really depends on the driver support. In some cards where the alsa driver actually support multiple channels, you don't need arts or esound. Examples are SB Live! and derivatives and my old built in SIS7018 sound chip in my motherboard. In my supposedly superior NVIDIA NForce2 Sound, the driver only support a single channel (actually 2, left and right) of sound, no matter whether I use Alsa, OSS, or even NVIDIA's own driver. In this case, arts is needed for multiple channel support.

 

The current NVIDIA driver right now supposedly support multiple channel if you use SPDIF speakers.. The only problem is that I don't have the money to buy one :P