GNOME, esd, and RealPlayer 7

[Daniel Lyddy <daniell cs berkeley edu>]

Hello,

I have had trouble on my Linux-powered GNOME system running RealPlayer 7
and esd concurrently.  ESD is esound's sound handler daemon, it acts as
a sound card manager, umpiring concurrent requests for sound events. 
GNOME is esd-aware, so when it generates sounds (for example, through
window operations) it makes requests to esd to have those sounds
played.  I noticed that if you do not instruct RealPlayer 7 to use esd
(this is available through RP7's View->Preferences menu, on the
"Performance" Tab), then RP7's direct communication with the sound card
can cause some strange side-effects, mostly seen by GNOME.  I believe
that RP7 effectively "hogs" the sound card's resources, causing GNOME's
sound requests to be queued up by esd.  For some reason, this causes
GNOME to "freeze" during certain operations, such as closing windows or
pressing panel launcher buttons.

The solution, of course, is to instruct RP7 to route all its sound
output through esd, even though it does not sound as good as routing
sound directly to the soundcard.  Again, to do this within RP7, click
"View->Preferences," select the "Performance" tab, and go down to "Audio
Driver" options.  Select the radio button for "Use ESD."

Dan
-- 
Daniel Lyddy		daniell@cs.berkeley.edu
California PATH/UC Berkeley Vision Group
Richmond Field Station, Building 452
1357 S. 46th St, Richmond, CA 94804-4698
tel: +1 (510) 231-5659  fax: +1 (510) 231-5600
url: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daniell

It doesn't matter how bad things are.
What matters is whether things will get better.
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