[linux-audio-dev] Best road to audio programming happiness?

Steve Harris S.W.Harris at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tue Sep 23 04:06:00 UTC 2003


On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 07:12:35PM -0700, Thomas Webb wrote:
> 
> > Anyhoo, now that I'm over them, I would love to get
> > cracking on some chunky
> > audio projects but I'm a bit unsure of a kind of
> > "best practises" approach
> > for audio programming. What should I study? Whats
> > the best way to go?!
> 
> Everyone on the list is gonna hate me for saying this
> :), but do a simple audio app in OSS first. Like, a
> sample player. Only then will you appreciate what ALSA
> and JACK has to offer.

Thats a bit like saying "try repeatadly stabbing yourself in the leg, then
when you stop it will feel great!" ;)

I agree with Paul (see, it does happen ;), JACK is the best audio API for
linux, and its portable to MacOS X. If you want more portability, use
PortAudio.

> SDL is cool. I like it, but I mostly just use it for
> games because as far as sound goes, it's very basic.
> It kinda uses the "lest common denominator" approach
> for cross-platform capability. Last time I used it for
> audio, It only supported 8-bit sound, and I don't
> think that's changed since then.

Its pretty hard to build UIs out of it, I tried and gave up (cf.
PressGang/JAMin). I think GTK and Qt are just better for that kind of
thing.

- Steve 



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