13 Jun
2005
13 Jun
'05
1:04 p.m.
thing is though: he does have a point. why is
this stuff still so
hard, after so many years? its -not- the drivers, imho, its the
moving-target nature of ALSA and all the competing audio API's,
underneath a pile of semi-working apps ..
the competing APIs is definitely a problem. the OSS guys continue to
refuse to accept ALSA, and continue to promote the benefits of
their API
and libraries. The layers that have been built on top of them
(PortAudio, JACK, the arts audio api, gnome-sound, etc) continue to
compete with each other in various ways.
what is happening on linux is similar to the windows world: multiple
audio APIs each of which serve a different purpose (windows own MM
api,
ASIO, GSIF). OS X has a head start here because they forced everyone,
even the email client writers, to use a callback model for audio I/
O via
CoreAudio. if we could do that on linux, the biggest headaches
could be
solved quickly. but as you note, we can't.