[linux-audio-dev] What parts of Linux audio simply suck ? - ALSA

[Juan Linietsky]

ALSA related, I hate:

-Dmix. It's not fair, why not the windows/beos approach which uses 
primary/secondary buffers? so you can
AT THE SAME TIME access asyncronously to the audio device (Jack) and 
have lower priority audio mix when it can, by copying it from from some 
less-priority buffers too? I mean it can be done at driver/kernel level, 
so WHY dmix/jack have to be exclusive??

-Module configuration parameters. WHY ON EARTH do I have to specify the 
IO port for mpu401, joystick, etc as driver options when loading the 
modules for my soundcard, else doesnt work? What year are we on?! I cant 
believe that this resource allocation is not handled by ALSA or the 
linux kernel!

-OSS/ALSA Conflicting modules in hotplug. Hotplug seems to make a mess 
in many systems i've seen, of loading ALSA and OSS modules at the same 
time, by rendering the system audio unusable.

-Mixer is very complicated, with lot of useless options for the card, 
many times buggy with inverted ins/outs (CMIPCI). Why not simply make 
the alsa mixer system work with categories? I Mean.. you
can have the basic categories INPUT/OUTPUT, but also to host special 
categories like 3D control, individual
channels of sblive, and other stuff which may be soundcard specific? 
This way mixers could be sane again.

And many little things, but this is the main ones I think.

Cheers
Juan







Dave Phillips wrote:

> Greetings:
>
>  The subject says it all.
>
>  My own "Linux audio sucks" hobbyhorse:
>
>    No way to recall a complex configuration of apps and plugins with 
> all settings intact. If I use a complicated setup with multiple synths 
> and plugins I have no way to recall these applications to their 
> previous settings. LASH/LADCCA was supposed to address this situation 
> but I don't know where that project stands at this point.
>
>  And your favorite is... ?
>
> Best,
>
> dp
>
>
>