[linux-audio-user] Common linux audio layer

[Kevin Ernste]

Hi Chris -

I don't have real answers to your questions (other than "more apps
need to get to know JACK"), but I can attest to the strange feeling of
watching your excellent videos and, with the JACK tutorial in
particular, being ironically unable to open the discussed applications
along with you because the audio device is blocked playing the
video....an audio Catch 22.  I can imagine a new user running into
this and being pretty frustrated.

In any case, the other reason I chimed in was to thank you for your
work.  The newest version of the JACK video is especially well done
and I think new users in particular will benefit.

Kevin


On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 02:32:45 +0100, Christoph Eckert
<mchristoph.eckert at t-online.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> while doing the videos, I wondered about one thing.
> 
> Linux is a multitasking and a multiuser machine.
> 
> But: there's no audio layer on the operating system level.
> 
> While different users can burn CDs and share the CPU, there's
> no possibility included that multiple applications can play
> sound - if the applications are started by different users,
> the situation is getting worse.
> 
> Isn't it a really ugly design that one aplication can grab the
> audio device using ALSA or OSS and block it for any other
> application?
> 
> So, there have been different solutions for this, esound for
> Gnome, artsd for KDE. But still, there's no reasonable
> default system that can be used by *all* applications, so
> application developers can use *one* API instead of having to
> implement multiple completely different interfaces (ALSA,
> OSS, arts, esound, jack, portaudio...)?
> 
> So my question is: Is there work in progress somewhere out
> there which will solve this by implementing a common unix
> audio layer? Or, will be jack be the layer that will soon be
> included into the boot process by all distributors?
> 
> Well, I guess JACK is a special soundserver for a special
> task, and I guess it lacks some other multimedia features.
> 
> So, is there any common acknowledgement concerning unix audio
> (you see I avoid linux but using unix instead ;-)?
> 
> Any thouht are very welcome.
> 
>  Best regards
> 
> 
>     ce
> 
>