[gentoo-user] Sound card is only usable by one application at a time

[Yoav Luft]

Hi,
On my dell Vostro 1520, with intel hda ICH9 82801I sound card
(xSTAC92HD71B3, according to /proc/asound/card0/codec), only one
application can access the sound card at a time. This probably means
that applications access the hardware, and not some software mixer. I
tried to follow information in the alsa wiki
(http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html#pcm_plugins_dmix)
for setting manually dmix, but couldn't configure anything working. I
could find any good documentation (and I don't have plenty of time to
dig in it, it's the middle of the semester). Does anyone can help on
the topic?