From: NoEMail@home.org   
      
   Rich  wrote:   
   >>   
   >> Alsa has several restrictions. IIRC only one sound output to one   
   >> device, so they can block each other. I use Pulseaudio and it works   
   >> fine.   
   >   
   > ALSA has no such restriction.   
   >   
   > Some hardware has that restriction, in which case unless one configures   
   > Alsa to do mixing in the driver, multiple simultaneous outputs will   
   > block each other.   
   >   
   > But on hardware that provides a hardware mixer, ALSA will not block   
   > simultaneous outputs, they just get mixed together.   
      
      
      
   I can't describe all the things I have tried to get sound. It turns   
   out that twice I did get sound. I am running an NVidia card that   
   has two hdmi outputs. One is a standard hdmi socket, and the other   
   is a DVI socket. I have a DVI-HDMI adapter on the DVI and I   
   feed the real HDMI to a large screen, and the adapted DVI to a   
   small screen just to my right. The real DVI is alsa hw:1,3, and   
   the adapted hdmi is alsa hw:1,7. When I do speaker-test on   
   these devices, both of them give sound as specified. Once   
   when I ran a speaker test I got a "busy" message and no sound   
   came out. I have never got two sources mixed ever on this machine.   
      
   That suggests to me, that it may be that both chrome and firefox   
   think they are sending sound out when they are not.   
      
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