[linux-audio-dev] Re: Re: alsa, oss , efficiency?

[Kjetil S. Matheussen]

lemmel:
>
> Le mercredi 01 novembre 2006 16:51, Kjetil S. Matheussen a écrit :
>> Only the oss modules in the linux kernel are deprecated. Programs using
>> the OSS api will still continue to work, currently most importantly
>> because of the oss emulation module in alsa.
> I knew that the oss module was deprecated, and I infered that using the OSS
> mecanism was too deprecated :-P. Are sure [1]?

Hmm, well, who decides... I think its pretty safe to write code for OSS
and be sure it will work for a long time. Maybe longer than code 
written for ALSA as well, who knows.


>> If you should choose between alsa and oss, and the oss version works
>> just as well, or better than the alsa version, choose oss, because its a
>> more portable API than alsa.
> What do you mean by "the oss version works just as well, or better than the
> alsa version" ?

Thats a liberal quote...
But sorry, I don't think I can write what I ment any clearer... (well, you
can remove the comma after "well", but thats as clear as I can make it, 
english is not my native language either. :-) )


>> However, if I were you, I would use sndlib, portaudio, jack, or some other
>> higher level audio input/output library instead of oss or alsa.
> Well, all the files, that I will play, will have the same charactistics, do I
> really need to bother with an hi-level API [2] ?

Why not?


>
> [1] I noticed that a lot of applications still use OSS, and I thought it was
> because the migration to ALSA was too complex.

That might be one reason. But if it works well with OSS, thats often good 
enough. Its a shame it sometimes is hard to make OSS programs work with 
jack though, but thats a problem that goes for alsa programs as well. 
(Actually, its worse with alsa programs.)


> [2] Futhermore I am afraid that an hi-level API will produce time drifts in
> the playing.
>

No, I don't think so. Many people use portaudio, it could be your best 
choise.