Flash plugin blocks sound

[Cliff76]

I know this is a well known issue but I'm wondering if there is an easy way to fix the problem. Whenever I load a Flash plugin in FF that plays sound it block all other apps and system sounds from the sound card. I followed a link in the firefox shell script which led me to a issue tracker of some sort describing the problem in detail. According to the posts on the issue tracker there appears to be an acceptable workaround for the issue but I couldn't make out exactly what was involved. Has anyone here gotten around the problem and if so would you help explain it to me in simple terms? Thanks in advance...

Cliff

[Cliff76]

Re: Flash plugin blocks sound

It looks like Firefox is setup to use esound on my Kubuntu system. Is there a particular reason for this? Can I make it use arts instead? Or should I try to make it use aoss? I'm looking for the most painless way to multiplex sound from Flash plugins with the rest of my system. Is there someplace I can go to learn more about how sound works on Linux?

[cantab]

Re: Flash plugin blocks sound

Make it use aoss. /etc/firefox/firefoxrc should contain the line

FIREFOX_DSP="aoss"

That should stop flash blocking sound. And if everything else on your system is well-behaved flash won't get blocked itself either.

[Cliff76]

Re: Flash plugin blocks sound

Thanx a heap! That fixed it! fore some reason I had FIREFOX_DSP="none". There has to be a reason I'm sure but I don't know what it could be. By chance would you know how to get VMWare to multiplex sound with the host OS? I run Kubuntu Dapper as my host and WinXP as a guest and if I have Amarok playing when I boot WinXP the sound card auto disables. I can only manually re-enable it after killing Amarok. Sometimes I can't re-enable it at all. (I'm guessing it's because a ghost Amarok process hangs somewhere during these times.)

[cantab]

Re: Flash plugin blocks sound

FIREFOX_DSP="none" is the default. I suppose Mozilla are just playing it safe, but it does cause a fair bit of problems.

I don't know about VMWare sorry. I suggest you start another thread though.