[LAD] [ANNOUNCE] Safe real-time on the desktop by default; Desktop/audio RT developers, read this!

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 23 June 2009, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
>> +10,000
>>
>> PA is one of the biggest screwups ever, but red hat can't see it.
>
>I don't think PA is a bad thing. On my laptop, PA works as follows:
>
>1) takes care of general desktop stuff as needed
>2) when JACKD connects directly to ALSA, PA ceases to play anything through
>the audio card (who would want any "you got mails" in the middle of an audio
>production anyhow?) but it also prevents other apps from complaining how
>they cannot access the audio card.
>
>Now, since I do not know enough about the innards of PA beyond couple of
>conference slides, I cannot attest just how many apps actually are
>intercepted by PA or if they are designed to gracefully ignore lack of
>output, but to me this spells out a desktop experience the way it is
>supposed to be. Granted, PA still has bugs to work out and I had it crap out
>on me after couple standby/resume cycles at which point I simply had to
>restart it. Other than that I had no noticeable problems with it.
>
>So, I wonder if part of the problem could be hardware-specific (cannot
>imagine how this would be the case, but then what else would cause such
>divergent perception of PA?)
>
>Ico

Oh it works fine on my lappy, IF you don't mind the audio being 3  words 
behind the lips making the noise when watching a news clip from 
cnn/fgox/abc/nbc/whoever.

I had to get rid of it to even get ANY sound on my main machine, which has at 
least 3 audio systems in it, I simply could not convince it that the default 
card to output to was the audigy2 (SBO400) card.  The ASUS mobo audio just 
doesn't cut it, and AFAICT, the 'hda' audio on my HD-2400 Pro video card is 
not even bonded out.

PA probably works reasonably well for those who want to tinker with it for 
each audio generating app they run.  But put it into a multichannel/multicard 
environment and it craps its pants.

Me, I just wanna see & hear the news from the tv peoples web sites like cnn 
etc.  Or play some music I ripped from my own CD's.  For that, PA fails.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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