[linux-audio-dev] Buffer size settings - Mac/Windows

[Paul Davis]

>The MAudio driver setup card was downright dishonest. It said "latency:
>128 samples", when actually latency was 256... that should have been
>labeled "buffer size" to be more honest. 

michael - windows and linux use the term "buffer" in different
ways. on windows, it generally means "the chunk of memory
corresponding to the period between h/w interrupts from the device"
(called a "period" in ALSA and a "fragment" in OSS). in ALSA, a
"buffer" is the entire hardware buffer which is divided into smaller
pieces (called "periods"). windows seems to have no real term for this
chunk of memory.

interestingly, the design of ASIO only allows 2 interrupts per
hardware buffer. ALSA is much more flexible in handling this kind of
thing. 

--p