How to find out what app is hogging the soundcard

[Philipp Überbacher]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 13:02:42 +0100
Philipp Überbacher <hollunder at gmx.at> wrote:

> On Thu, 8 Nov 2007 22:20:33 -0200
> "Chris Dawson" <xrdawson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > You can also use "lsof | grep snd"
> > 
> > Chris
> > 
> > On Nov 8, 2007 10:26 AM,  <hollunder at gmx.at> wrote:
> > > Does anyone know how I can find out which app is using or hogging
> > > the soundcard?
> > > It already happens at startup.
> > > I can use audacious or mpd but not aqualung or jack.
> > >
> > > > Aqualung:
> > > > Probing JACK driver... JACK server not found
> > > > Probing ALSA driver... device busy
> > > > Probing OSS driver... device busy
> > >
> > > > Jack:
> > > > the playback device "hw:0" is already in use. Please stop the
> > > > application using it and run JACK again
> > > > cannot load driver module alsa
> > >
> > > I use ubuntustudio 7.10 from a fresh install + xfce.
> > > It worked previously but I don't know what I did to break it.
> > >
> > > Help is appreciated
> > > regards
> > >         Philipp
> > >
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> > >
> > 
> 
> Thanks, but neither "lsof | grep snd" nor "fuser /dev/snd/*" show
> anything besides the mixer in xfce as well as gnome, and killing the
> mixer doesn't help.
> I somehow start to think that it might be an alsa problem, like some
> part of alsa not freeing the soundcard when an app needs exclusive
> access.
> 

Thanks for all your help. I found the suspicious process 'speech
dispatcher' using htop. Removing that program solved the problem. I
don't know why it didn't show up anywhere, but it's all good now.

Best,
	Philipp