Open Sound System
OSS 4.0 User's Guide

vmix - Virtual Mixer audio driver.

Open Sound System provides an audio mixer device to mix multiple audio streams being played to the same audio device. Recoring and full duplex is supported too with most devices.

The vmix driver is a 2nd generation virtual mixing driver. Similar functionality is provided by the older softoss driver.

Unlike softoss the vmix driver doesn't create visible audio devices. Instead the driver creates "hidden" audio engines that will be automatically used when some application opens the master device. However the ossinfo program shows these virtual engines with the -e option. Also the -a and -A options will show these engines if the -v (verbose) option is used.

MIXER DEVICES

The vmix driver doesn't create dedicated mixer (volume control) device. Instead it hooks to the mixer of the parent (master) device. The parent device will have few vmix specific volume and peak meter controls attached.

KNOWN PROBLEMS

The vmix driver doesn't work in Sparc systems and with older x86 processors (PII, first Athlon models and andy older CPUs). In these systems the older softoss based virtual mixer driver will be installed automatically instead of vmix.
In some cases vmix may be enabled in digital (S/PDIF) output devices that may be used to play AC3 or DTS streams. Due to mixing these encoded formats may not always work properly.

FILES

vmix.conf Device configuration file

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