[PlanetCCRMA] Newbie needs help with Configuring sound in RH8.0

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

> basic information about performance, requirements, etc. Concretely, I think I
> would need to know:
> 
> 1) Is such a machine (in principle) able to run rosegarden with a software
>    synthesizer successfully?

I think so. It is not a speed daemon but should be enough. 

> 2) I've read something about jackd, which I have installed, but I don't know
>    what it is, whether it is supposed to be running or not, etc.

It is a low latency audio server that applications can sue
simultaneously. I suggest you surf to the following url and read about
it:
  http://jackit.sourceforge.net

> 3) When I'm running Rosegarden and successfully listening to music (though with
>    noise or out of rhythm, I see the processes running in my machine, and I see
>    that arTs is running as well. Does need this to be running? I tried to kill
>    it, but then I got no sound.

That is strange. arTs is the Gnome sound daemon and AFAIK it uses OSS to
send sound. So I'm not sure if you have ALSA (the newer sound drivers)
actually loaded and running. First turn off arTs. In the main menu go to
"Preferences" "Sound" and disable sound server startup. Logout and login
again. arTs should not be running. Verify that alsa has started (do you
have a "/proc/asound" directory? Make sure that the mixer has been
configured (as explained in the installation guide). Try playing a wav
file with aplay or other native alsa application...

-- Fernando