[linux-audio-dev] What's the best audio IO API on Linux

[Michael Ost]

On Mon, 2003-09-15 at 04:28, Paul Davis wrote:
> a few corrections:
> 
> >Well, the main differences between the OSS-Layer and ALSA are:
> >1.) alsa is the new driver in linux kernel >= 2.6.X
> >2.) oss-layers need ioctl() - calls to manage/configure sound devices (and  ioctl() 
> >calls
> >are just possible for root-users !!!!!),so oss is really user-unfriendly if you want
> > to programm a application
> 
> this isn't true. any user that can open a device can call ioctl on the
> device. the real difference in the API design between the two is that
> in OSS, you make system calls (open/read/write/close/ioctl/mmap etc)
> directly, which means that any transformation of the data or other
> "clever" stuff has to happen inside the device driver as part of the
> kernel. in ALSA, you make library calls (snd_pcm_open, etc), which
> allows ALSA to have a rich set of "plugins" that can transform the
> data, virtualize the device, and do all kinds of other things, all in
> a user-space library where it can do no harm to anything except your
> application. 
> 
> but i'll put it a little more strongly: NOBODY in 2003 should start a
> new application using the OSS API. NOBODY.

I'd also like to chime in that OSS is not being worked on by anybody, as
near as I can tell. If you want any audio hardware supported, the action
is in ALSA.

- mo