Access to the sound hardware resources is controlled by artsd, the aRts daemon. This allows different applications to simultaneously send requests to the server, where they can be mixed together and played. Without a centralized sound server a single application using a sound device would prevent other applications from using it.
To use aRts there should be one and only one copy of artsd running. It is typically run when KDE starts up if it is enabled in the KControl Sound Server panel.
The program accepts the following arguments:
Set server auto-suspend time, in seconds. A value of zero disables auto-suspend.
Specify the name of an application to be used to display error, warning, and informational messages. If you are running KDE you can use the artsmessage utility for this.
Increase the size of network buffers to a value suitable for running over a 10 mbps LAN. This is equivalent to using the -w 5 option (see below).
When running artsd over a network connection to another host you typically want to use a larger buffer size to avoid dropouts. ARts provides applications with a suggested minimum buffer size. Without this option the default size is based on the fragement size * fragment count. Using this option you can increase the size from the default by a factor of n.
Set information level - 3 (quiet), 2 (warnings), 1 (info), 0 (debug).
In most cases simply running artsd will suffice.