Audio oddities (ESD & ALSA)

[Wuqensta]

I'd like some enlightenment to this... If I want to listen to e.g. mp3s or netradio while playing ATITD, I have to set both xmms and eclient to use ESD because with ALSA the first of xmms and eclient which plays sound renders "device or resource busy" for the other. Kind of inconvenient to switch back and forth between ESD and ALSA... With ESD xmms blocks audio from other apps, though works nice and smooth in parallel with eclient, but paradoxally with ALSA it works fine in parallel with all other apps but eclient...

What gives?

EDIT: in case it matters anything, I'm using FC4...

[Pluribus]

Did you specifiy the -esd command line option?

[Wuqensta]

Did you specifiy the -esd command line option?
Yes, otherwise eclient is dead quiet when xmms is playing something. With both set to use ESD, both have audio... but other apps lose it. All the other apps, however, need ALSA to be set as xmms' driver instead if I want to hear something from e.g. my email or about any other app without stopping xmms.

[stimpson]

With ESD xmms blocks audio from other apps, though works nice and smooth in parallel with eclient, but paradoxally with ALSA it works fine in parallel with all other apps but eclient...

That's really weird. ALSA should allow multiple clients to use the sound card just fine. The only thing I can think of is OSS emulation blocking the sound card. I'm not sure if eclient uses OSS or ALSA sound output by default - have you tried starting eclient with the -alsa option to make sure?

[Wuqensta]

I'm not sure if eclient uses OSS or ALSA sound output by default - have you tried starting eclient with the -alsa option to make sure?
Most probably defaults to OSS... OSS is always there, but can't be sure about the others. And yea, tried the ALSA setting already before ESD :(