[LAD] A History of Audio on Linux somewhere?

[Philip Rhoades]

Matt,


On 2022-02-02 08:35, Matt Flax wrote:
> I realise that the original thread may have been more of a focus on
> Kernel level audio software, rather then user space audio software,


Yes.


> 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


Not actually what I was looking for but your contributions were 
interesting nevertheless!

Thanks,

Phil.


> 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.

-- 
Philip Rhoades

PO Box 896
Cowra  NSW  2794
Australia
E-mail:  phil at pricom.com.au