13 Jan
2010
13 Jan
'10
7:58 p.m.
The only issue I currently have with PortAudio is that it does not
work very well with pulseaudio. It seems to have problems using the
alsa-plugin mechanism. I have mentioned this on the portaudio list,
but none of the developers responded, only a couple of other users
said they had similar problems.
To use portaudio on Linux, I always have to kill pulseaudio.
Otherwise, it's fine.
Victor
On 12 Jan 2010, at 20:11, Olivier Guilyardi wrote:
On 01/12/2010 07:15 PM, Michael Ost wrote:
We are considering using PortAudio for Linux
hardware support (and
Windows/Mac as well). What's the word on the quality, reliability,
ease-of-programming, latency and performance in Linux?
PortAudio on Linux is very reliable in my experience. It's rather
easy to
program with, although I personally dislike its massive-camel-case
syntax.
Latency is quite ok. PortAudio actually gives you hints on low and
high
latencies for a particular device. For instance, on a HDA Intel
consumer
soundcard, it ranges from 10ms to 45ms. I'm using the high one in my
app,
although I can't remember exactly why ATM.
But as others are saying in this thread, nowadays a Linux app really
needs JACK
support, and you shouldn't rely on Portaudio for this purpose,
because it
doesn't play well with the JACK ports paradigm.
Another reason you might want to add JACK support (perhaps in
addition to
PortAudio) is that unless I missed something it is still required by
FFADO for
firewire devices support.
Our product (Receptor) is used in live situations
by non-
programmers, so
the support can't be "tweaky" if you know what I mean. The product
only
needs to support a couple of sound cards, though, so it won't have to
target lots of hardware.
I've now maintained a JACK app, namely Jackbeat, for several years,
and although
it doesn't have a massive user base, I can tell you that JACK can
indeed be
tricky for some linux/audio newbies.
This is why I've added extra options: PortAudio and PulseAudio. This
way, the
user can get the app up and running in seconds. But if he/she wants
more (lower
latency, connecting with other JACK apps, etc..), then he can switch
to JACK,
which is easily performed in many cases.
I think this is the way it happens in many circumstances, not only
on Linux: an
easy default is provided, and one can optimize his/her setup with a
few efforts.
--
Olivier
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