[linux-audio-user] Portaudio...

[Russell Hanaghan]

Sampo Savolainen wrote:

>Quoting Russell Hanaghan <hanaghan at starband.net>:
>
>  
>
>>Does anyone have portaudio functioning on their Linux box and if so, can
>>
>>you give a brief overview of how and what is required?
>>
>>eg: I read it will co-exist and work with alsa?  Does that mean it 
>>co-operates with jack and can be run from the Qjackctl app?  Latency 
>>issues? is it robust?
>>    
>>
>
>Portaudio and alsa are different sorts of beasts.
>
>ALSA is a standard for and a set of drivers. Drivers as in hardware drivers.
>They talk to the hardware devices and the OS.
>
>Jack is a piece of software, as portaudio is, which uses the OS driver to
>interface with the audio hardware.
>
>Portaudio on the other hand, is made for porting audio software (hence the
>name). It is a common programming interface (API) for audio handling. The
>idea is that audio interface for the application is the same even if the end
>result would be running on Windows, OSX, Linux.
>
>Here is a layer representation. It's a bit simplified though...
>
>+------------------------------------------+
>| Audio application easily ported for many |
>| different operating systems. For example |
>|                 Audacity                 |
>+------------------------------------------+
>|                PORTAUDIO                 |
>+------------+----------+-----------+------+
>| OSS | ALSA |          | Windows   | ASIO |
>|     |      |          | Audio API | (?)  |
>+------------+          +-----------+------+
>|  Operating |          | Operating System |
>|   System   |          |   (Windows)      |
>|  (Linux)   |          |                  |
>+------------+          +------------------+
>|  Audio HW  |          |    Audio HW      |
>+------------+          +------------------+
>
>Portaudio is designed so that applications using it have a single well
>defined and easy to use API for audio. Then portaudio has operating system
>specific 'drivers'. Portaudio v18 has only OSS support (=OSS driver) for
>Linux, but v19 has also a driver for ALSA and JACK.
>
>The part which gets confusing is that with jack support, portaudio doesn't
>speak to the audio drivers, but to another application (jackd). So with jack
>the layering is as folllows:
>
> Application (Audacity)->Portaudio->Jack->ALSA->OS->Audio HW
>
>(Of course, jack can also use it's OSS drivers instead of ALSA)
>
>The end result?
>
>Any application written for portaudio will support all the methods of
>"talking to" audio hardware that portaudio supports.
>
>And finally, the answer to your question:
>
>Yes ALSA and portaudio can coexist.
>
>(Disclaimer: I am not that familiar with portaudio, so proper developers
>will find many discrepancies in this text. But this description was meant
>for general education)
>
> Sampo
>
>  
>
Sampo,

Thanks. This is a nice peice of detail that describes the layout well.

My primary motivation for inquiring is to try and get the latest of Midi 
and track apps working that has popped on our screens; "Wired" shows 
jack support but I think they mena through he portaudion api. I also 
read thru the portaudio site and saw that V-19 is required as it is the 
first to integrate with ALSA and jack.

So now I need to figure out how to get it fired up on my MDK 10.0 rig.

Does anyone know what settings jack needs in order to have a nice 
conversation with portaudio?

thanks
R~