15 Oct
2003
15 Oct
'03
4:56 a.m.
On Wednesday 15 October 2003 11:51, Paul Davis wrote:
well, it might be nice if at least some kind of mixer docs, or mixer HOWTO
existed, even if things will change in the API...
How about docs
for the mixer interfaces? or a simple HOWTO.
the mixer interface is a problem. OSS glosses over this by hiding 90%
of the capabilities of most hardware mixers and stuffing it into an
incredibly simplified model that then prevents users from doing things
that they can do under Windows. ALSA messes it up by exporting 90% of
the capabilities of most hardware mixers into user space and leaving
the complexity for someone else to deal with :) takashi and jaroslav are working on the issues. i
think their approach
is correct (export the hardware capabilities, wrap them in alsa-lib to
provide a simple interface for most apps and users) but it requires
significant amounts of coding and won't emerge in a few days.
For very small, simple players, yes, OSS does satisfy the requirements. (think
embedded devices, with simple user requirements - 44100, 16bit, 2 ch.).
Oss's simplicity is both a boon and it's downfall.
Alsa/Jack is wonderful, and greatly more flexible
than OSS, and is what
linux needs to move to more professional recording software, but it does
take more lines of code than OSS to do simple things. With OSS, I can
have the device opened and playing audio in about 5 lines of code.
assuming that your requirements are met by OSS's incredibly simplistic
model of an audio device driver. need to control xrun detection? want
to avoid starting the device until you've got enough data ready? want
to use non-interleaved access? want to use a sample rate or sample
format not supported by OSS? well, it won't take 5 lines, or 50 lines
or 500 lines of code: you simply can't do any of this in OSS.