[LAU] Some disturbing news

[Chris Cannam]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2018, at 12:44, Paul Davis wrote:
> The Pulse audio API was never intended to be used by applications. They
> were supposed to continue using the ALSA API, so that Skype would work with
> or without Pulse audio. If Pulse is present, a correctly written ALSA-using
> application (mostly) can use it. If Pulse is absent, an ALSA-using app is
> happy. By contrast, a Pulse-using app can only work if Pulse is present &
> working. I don't know who within the Skype team made this decision, but it
> was the wrong decision.

My own software (e.g. Sonic Visualiser) uses the Pulse API directly. It was at the time the most reliable way I could find to make it work on systems with PulseAudio, and I added it even though I already had some working ALSA output through PortAudio. It's possible that the Skype developers reached a similar conclusion.


Chris