[LAD] PortAudio experience

[Paul Davis]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Michael Ost <most at museresearch.com> wrote:
> Paul Davis wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Michael Ost <most at museresearch.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> We are considering using PortAudio for Linux hardware support (and
>>> Windows/Mac as well). What's the word on the quality, reliability,
>>> ease-of-programming, latency and performance in Linux?
>>
>> it works. its development seems to be an issue. it will not fix any of
>> the issues that you'd otherwise have to tackle on linux.
>
> Can you say more about that last sentence? I'm not quite getting it.

portaudio doesn't replace ALSA, it sits on top of it. so any issues
that you might have with ALSA on linux will still exist to some degree
even if you use portaudio.

>> however, i'm puzzled: you guys are already running on linux - what are
>> you using now, and why the switch? cross-platform?
>
> Yes, cross platform. I'm investigating Windows/MacOS support. We've got our
> own portability layer, but it's only really implemented for Linux.
>
> BTW - I looked at JACK, but a quick google scan suggests that its not quite
> ready for prime time in Windows.

I don't think that is true, but its not clear that you want your
product based on a server/client model anyway. The windows
installation seems to work quite well, but it requires an
ASIO-supported interface. I think JACK for Windows works more or less
as well as JACK on linux or OS X, but its likely to create a lot of
extra friction in terms of user experience for your particular use
case. OTOH, stephane does have a trick in jack2 whereby you can make
the app *become* the server, and then run the app, so to speak, as an
internal client, so that there is no IPC overhead at all. i don't know
if this works in windows.