[linux-audio-dev] Re: What Parts of Linux Audio Simply Work Great?

Richard Spindler richard.spindler at gmail.com
Sun Jun 19 13:04:20 UTC 2005


Hm, maybe the following will be an acceptable solution:

Non-Pro Applications should use the ALSA-API for Audio Output and Input.

They will use the default ALSA Device, which by default should be the
DMIX Plugin, which does samplerate conversion and mixing, if this is
not provided by the Hardware.

For the Pro-Applications there is jack, but as soon as the jack daemon
is started, it will automagically connect the default ALSA-Device and
DMIX Plugin through the ALSA-Jack plugin to jack. This of course could
also be done by an app like qjackctl.


This provides several benefits IMHO:

Consumer-Apps just work, no matter how many concurrently, no matter
what samplerate.

If you prefer to use jack, the Consumer apps will continue to work, as expected.

the Software Routing would look like this:

 [Application] -\
 [Application] --+--> [ALSA-DMIX] -> [ALSA-JACK] -> [JACK] -> [ALSA-HW]
 [Application] -/

or without jack running it'd look like this:

 [Application] -\
 [Application] --+--> [ALSA-DMIX] -> [ALSA-HW]
 [Application] -/

of course it'd be possible to keep jack running all the time, but this
is a point that I'm not sure about yet.

To me this seems to be a more or less acceptable solution. If it's
well implemented by your favorite Linux-Distribution Vendor it should
work, I believe.

One thing that might be interesting is wheter it'd be possible to
re-route dmix without stopping a running Audio-Application.

-Richard




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