[LAU] PulseAudio and Alsa

Jeremy Henty onepoint at starurchin.org
Sun Aug 31 12:43:30 EDT 2008


On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 09:38:58AM -0600, Stephen Doonan wrote:

> I just wonder whether, from  a Linux audio/MIDI users point of view,
> PulseAudio is  intended to become  a replacement for ALSA  (and that
> therefore I ought to learn more about PulseAudio) or whether it will
> be regarded as more of  a nuisance, another level of complexity, and
> that it might  be better to try to be pure  ALSA instead, with Gnome
> and KDE sound servers disabled if possible.

Reading the PulseAudio  site and following a few links  it looks to me
as though PulseAudio is essentially a replacement for jack, ie. it's a
server that  links sound applications together.   On ALSA-only systems
it uses ALSA  to connect to the hardware.  However  it looks as though
it can also sit on top of JACK:

    http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules#JACKConnectivity
    http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-548178.html

I'd like to know what PulseAudio  offers that jack doesn't.  Is it the
networking?

Regards, 

Jeremy Henty 



More information about the Linux-audio-user mailing list