Error message when loading games

Panja

When freshly booted in to emulation station the first game I load gives me the following error:

lvl0:   AudioManager Error - Unable to open SDL audio: ALSA: Couldn't open audio device: Device or resource busy

Audio is working though but the error message is thrown anyways.
Anybody know how to fix this?

Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS - x86_x64 machine with Retropie 4.5.1

mitu

@Panja Try changing the Audio device in Emulationstation's audio settings and see if you get better results. It looks like system error, the soundcard access is blocked by another application which uses it.
What sound card is installed on your system ?

Panja

It's an Intel NUC7i5BNK so with integrated sound card on chip.
I've tried all different settings in ES without luck.

mitu

I'm thinking you have PulseAudio running, which grabs the audio card exclusively. Is the sound working in ES and/or games ?

Parabolaralus

That's kind of weird. I've been getting something very, very similar on the pi4 with raspbian lite - bugs are to be expected though.

This may be completely unrelated, but I usually disable onboard audio in the computers UEFI/BIOS for various reasons. The onboard (3.5mm often realtek) controller is different from the audio controller going through HDMI so it may or may not help here, but I haven't actually used a NUC so results may vary.

Panja

I’m using ALSA and disabled Pulse. Sound does work, in ES (game videos) and in games without problems. That’s the weird thing. It’s throwing the error but sound does work.

I could have a look in the BIOS. Gonna have a look.
Or maybe enabling Pulse again just for ES.

Panja

I've enabled Pulse again for within EmulationStation.
It seems to fix my problem so far. I'll keep a close eye on this.