GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 98558
Need some way to release sound device
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Rhythmbox should have either have a stop button, or the pause button should release the sound device. I'd like to leave Rhythmbox loaded and just minimized when I'm not using it, but if I do this the sound device is locked and no other applications can use it.
Well, use modern sound system like ALSA... Or you could write some patch for gstreamer osssink to release the sounddev when paused. Anyway, not a RB bug.
This is the same problem gst-player faces on http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115200 Pausing without changing the audiosink prevents other sound software from running (even with esound). I personally feel its a problem in gstreamer, but it should be easily fixable on the application level.
Yup, this is an application problem. Sources and sinks (when appropriate) should be set to NULL to release their resources.
I don't think so. I think it's a sound server issue. Applications shouldn't have to bother with this stuff. Say I'm playing my music over sftp://. Each connection setup is expensive (requires public/private key crypto). So we want to keep that connection open even when pausing for a few seconds. Anyways, if someone provides a patch to make rb record the position in the stream on pause, and then restore that on unpause, I'll apply it. But I don't really care enough to write that myself, and I still feel it's a workaround for the lack of a good sound server.
20 to 1 odds say sound server people blame gstreamer. Everyone keeps passing the buck while I can't pause when using esound (which still happens to be packaged with gnome, so It should be properly supported no matter how much it sucks.)
Looks like Benjamin Otte fixed this in the latest CVS.