[LAD] A History of Audio on Linux somewhere?

[Matt Flax]

I realise that the original thread may have been more of a focus on 
Kernel level audio software, rather then user space audio software, 
however the old school clunky XForms UI were classic from back in those 
days.

Found some screen shots of the dynamic audio software :

https://web.archive.org/web/20001028203345/http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~flatmax/dynamic/dynamicScreen.html

On 2/2/22 08:14, Matt Flax wrote:
> Back in 1999 and just before it was the crossover between ALSA and OSS.
>
> I remember getting help from mailing lists as a newbie, just making 
> your first sound using C/C++ was difficult back then !
>
> I don't know if this is the type of thing you are after, but this was 
> my developer focus back in those days ....
>
> I produced two software packages which were very experimental and not 
> heavily used by others, you can see their original pages here (called 
> projects jumbled and dynamic) :
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/19991104182532/http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~flatmax/dynamic/jumbled/jumbled.html 
>
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/19991104155359/http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~flatmax/dynamic/dynamic.html 
>
>
> Interestingly it may have been using OSS ? I can't quite remember.
>
> The original "jumbled" software was a real time CD to MIDI wavetable 
> player. The big idea was to play your CDs streaming through the AWE 
> 32's RAM wavetable synthesiser. You could apply MIDI hardware effects, 
> you can actually still see the keyboard controls : 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20000416211019/http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~flatmax/dynamic/jumbled/jumbledCommands.html
>
> It worked quite nicely, except for the fact that the RAM front side 
> bus was too slow to pipe 44100 Hz CD audio through the MIDI's RAM. 
> This gave the system a looping effect,  where the audio playback would 
> loop a few times before being reloaded with the next block of audio 
> from the CD. The looping gave it it's name "jumbled". You could 
> trigger a few MIDI keys and get the CD's audio played back at 
> different pitches and also overly the AWE 32's effects.
>
> The next project was "dynamic" it simplified things to playing CDs 
> direct to the sound card. You can also see the sunsite.unc.edu 
> listing, with a sample mp3 up there. Project dynamic was unique in 
> that it had backwards blocking mode - where blocks of audio were read 
> from CD backwards, and also a reverse mode, where the blocks of audio 
> were reversed before being played.
>
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/sound/cdrom/project.dynamic.lsm
>
> Matt
>
> On 25/1/22 19:09, Philip Rhoades wrote:
>> People,
>>
>> I am just a regular user of Linux audio but I am interested in the 
>> history of how software was developed and what problems they were 
>> meant to solve on Linux eg OSS, ALSA, Jack etc and more recently 
>> PipeWire.
>>
>> Is there such a documented history already in existence on the web 
>> somewhere? (ie NOT a HOWTO) - that would be intelligible to non-audio 
>> professionals?
>>
>> I am interested in learning and understanding more about audio and 
>> perhaps making better use of my system (Fedora 34 + Wayland soon to 
>> be updated to 35).
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Phil.