[LAD] Anyone have experience with OSS (3 or 4)?

Paul Davis paul at linuxaudiosystems.com
Thu Dec 17 12:29:22 UTC 2009


On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 6:47 AM, Kjetil S. Matheussen
<k.s.matheussen at notam02.no> wrote:
> No. Not providing mixing for all devices is a design fault
> in alsa. I'm going to install OSS as soon as I get time.

Kjetil, although you're absolutely welcome to your own opinions on
this, I would note two things:

  1) ALSA has long provided "dmix" user space mixing without a server.
Its a very, very clever
      solution that is, unfortunately, so clever that it often doesn't
work  for the most demanding
      situations. For normal desktop use, it has always worked well.
However, as well as it works
      simply goes to emphasize all the desirable details of a desktop
sound system that dmix
      by itself does not provide: per-app volume control, easy device
switching, and more. As
      a result ...

   2) many people would say that its not ALSA's job to provide this
kind of functionality but
       instead to act as a kind of HAL for audio. The job of mixing
should (and can) be done
       by a user-space implementation (PulseAudio or JACK depending on
your workflow
       needs), and ALSA can simply be "the device drivers". This is
certainly how the
       audio ecosystem is shaping up on Linux now, particularly with
the increasing
       emphasis among those paying for system development because their work
       generally involves low power mobile devices where the desktop
issues are absent.

--p



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