[long] sound-server history Re: [linux-audio-user] What's arts?

[LinuxMedia]

 > garyb at cotecorner.com wrote:

> Robert,
> 
> Thanks for the back-story. It was more helpful
> than you could know. There are lots of very-detailed
> faqs out there, on numerous topics, but precious
> little that attempts to sum it all up.
> 
> From your post, and others by Guy, Rocco, and Rick,
> I've been able to make some good progress. Knowing
> what components are required or optional for what
> I'm trying to do was a big help.

You hit the nail right on the head. I can't tell you how much time I 
spent researching something (for weeks even) that didn't even pertain to 
my (perticular) goals. Heck... a person has to know --what it is-- (and 
were it fits into the Linux/Audio/Sound picture) before you can even say 
to yourself "do I need this"? That's where the majority of My time 
working with Linux/Music/Sound has been spent. It's no one's fault. In 
fact, there's many really wonderful people on this list that have 
educated Me and made that quest shorter for Me.

I want to mention another thing that (I think) you will find valuable...

Since you don't seem to be afraid of the command line, get "ecasound". 
It is a command line mulitrack-recorder/sound-effects/file-converter (I 
wont list any more of it's features because I will leave some out). It 
is very powerful, stable, and useful. But it's syntax is very simple. 
It's kind of like all those other command line utilities that you have 
been using, yet it combines them in one place (with a standard, simple 
syntax). You can choose to just use it to do a simple recording, and 
then build to do more complex things. And it spits out enough info into 
the shell to let You know if You need to look towards the software or 
hardware end to figure out what's wrong. It's like a lot of things 
though. You have to get to know how to use it. But since it doesn't have 
a GUI, and it doesn't (require) Jack, you can eliminate a lot of other 
issues (for now).

Wait... now that I think of it... You originally mentioned using "lame" 
and "mpg123". Good news... ecasound uses "lame" and "mpg123" (along with 
other stable/powerful command line utilities) to get it's work done, yet 
you use ecasound's simple syntax, so I know you have parts of ecasound 
installed.

> At any rate ... I disabled the arts server, and can
> now record from /dev/dsp. I'll have to determine
> based on experience whether I miss any of the features
> that arts provided. 

Yea... Keep it simple and build as you go...

Rocco