It seems that whenever I use Limewire and then try to play an mp3 with xmms , xmms says that something is blocking my sound card or something to that effect.
even if I close limewire xmms still gives the same error
xmms works fine after login until I open limewire.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Try using artsd or a similar sound server to allow multiple applications to access your soundcard simultaneously
OR
try disabling LimeWire's mp3 player in the options.

ok, i'll try that, thanks for the reply

Ok, tried disabling the plyer in Limewire and it didn't resolve the issue.
As far as the sound server goes i'm not sure how to go about that. I'll do some googling and see what I can come up with. If you have nay suggestions it would be appreciated.
thanks again.

What sound system do you use? esd, arts, alsa? Also what output plugin (oss, arts, esd, alsa) do you use for xmms? Finally what desktop enviornment do you use? Kde, Gnome, etc.?

Well i'm not sure what sound system I use, i'm still a newb but I can tell you what desktop amanger I use: KDE (Knoppix) if that makes any difference.
I'll see if I can find out what sound system i'm running and anything elsse.
thanks

The KDE desktop, by default, includes system sounds such as a specific sound when a new window is open or closed. These sounds may interfer with xmms or any other audio application. Also if you use a program which uses a diiferent sound system, such as esd, then the arts sound system may then not be active to produce sound for a different audio program which uses arts.

By default the arts sound system server is started with each KDE login. A way to check to see if it is running is to run a program called KDE Sysetm Guard. It is program used to monitor which programs are running. Click the process table table on the top of the page. Check to see if there is an entry for artsd or an entry for esd.

Try to reproduce your problem, run limewire and then run xmms. If the audio does not work then run KDE Syetem Guard again and check to see if the the other sound system (artsd or esd ) is running. If there is a change then the sound system used for xmms has been shut down to run the other sound system.

A solution would be to change the xmms sound output setting by right clicking on the xmms main window and selecting Preferences under the Options sub-menu. The window which pops up will have a selection for an output plugin. See if there is an arts plugin and select it to see if it works.

Let me know how it goes.

icronk, I had a similar error message running realplay on my KDE box. It turned out that in KDE you have to run the application that outputs sound through artsd (the default sound server) explicitly:
> artsdsp realplay
instead of
> realplay

I assume it should work the same with limewire and xmms. Try running
> artsdsp limewire
and
> artsdsp xmms
to be on the safe side.

Hope it helps.