ALSA

The Alsa sound mixer helps xmms and multiple instances of mplayer etc co-exist peacefully. It comes standard now with Fedora 4 and 5.

• In ~/.mplayer/config (vo=x11 is good for tranlucency, xv- for screen captures) add
• ao=alsa
• softvol = "yes" # this line may also be added to ./mplayer/gui.conf in case you like gmplayer
  

• xmms
  
• output plugins menu - Set to Alsa
• Under "Configure" select software mixing
  

• In Dell 8500 in particular the shortcuts for master and headphone volumes are separate . You can set up you r own and bind it to a command such as the following
• $ amixer set Headphone 5%+
  

Here's my ~/.asoundrc:
pcm.ossmix {
type dmix
ipc_key 1021 # must be unique!
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024 # must be power of 2
buffer_size 8192 # dito. It
#format "S32_LE"
#periods 128 # dito.
rate 48000
}

# bindings are cool. This says, that only the first
# two channels are to be used by dmix, which is enough for
# (most) oss apps and also lets multichannel chios work
# much faster:

bindings {
0 0 # from 0 => to 0
1 1 # from 1 => to 1
}
}

# Redirect to ossmix
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "ossmix" # use our new PCM here
}

# Redirect to ossmix
pcm.dsp0 {
type plug
slave.pcm "ossmix" # use our new PCM here
}

# mixer0 like above
ctl.mixer0 {
type hw
card 0
}