What Parts of Linux Audio Simply Work Great? (was Re: [linux-audio-dev] Best-performing Linux-friendly MIDI interfaces?)

[Christoph Eckert]

Hi,


> 1. You don't need GNOME or KDE support to develop audio
> applications any more than you need their support for
> accessing files, the network, the display or whatever. So
> they should remain neutral on this matter.

I absolutely agree. But why did they start to use 
arts/esound/gstreamer? Because they wanted to ensure that 
multiple applications can play sounds at the same time. What 
chance did they have to use a commonly accepted soundserver? 
None. There was no soundserver and no softwaremixing, and 
less people had (and still have) an audio card with 
hardwaremixing.

> 2. Any application that can run only under a particular
> window manager or that depends on facilities from a
> particular desktop is IMHO just broken. The choice of
> window manager / desktop belongs to the user, not the
> developer.

Yep.

> > (I think both GNOME & KDE are considering switching audio
> > APIs at the moment, so now is a good time for the
> > linux-audio community to get involved.)
>
> If everybody would just use ALSA for general use, and JACK
> for serious music / sound applications, that would be fine.
> The last thing we need is one more 'sound server / daemon'.
> (*)

Agreed. arts isn't maintained anymore, so KDE is looking for a 
replacement (like gstreamer). Because there's no common 
soundserver for all applications, they will need to make a 
decicion. Which audio subsystem should they support? ALSA 
direct access is no choice because it blocks the device. DMIX 
is a choice, but what if I want to use JACK simultaneously 
without using DMIX? JACK could become a common audio server 
but still it isn't. Any recommendation which audio system a 
programmer should use?

> (*)<rantmode>
>
> A few days ago I kicked up Rosegarden again to see if it
> could be useful for the project I was starting. It wasn't
> so I terminated it, only to find out later that there were
> still a number of KDE applications running, including a
> sound daemon, blocking access to all others. Grrr.

Welcome in the Linux audio world ;-) .

BTW: Arts has a timeout mode so it'll free the device as soon 
it isn't needed for more than the entered time.


Thanks & best regards


    ce