[linux-audio-dev] Re: Re: alsa, oss , efficiency? - Linux-audio-dev

2 Nov 2006

lemmel:
...

 Le mercredi 01 novembre 2006 16:51, Kjetil S. Matheussen a écrit :
  Only the oss modules in the linux kernel are
deprecated. Programs using
 the OSS api will still continue to work, currently most importantly
 because of the oss emulation module in alsa.  I knew that the oss module was
deprecated, and I infered that using the OSS
 mecanism was too deprecated :-P. Are sure [1]? 
Hmm, well, who decides... I think its pretty safe to write code for OSS
and be sure it will work for a long time. Maybe longer than code
written for ALSA as well, who knows.
...
   If you should
choose between alsa and oss, and the oss version works
 just as well, or better than the alsa version, choose oss, because its a
 more portable API than alsa.  What do you mean by "the oss version works just
as well, or better than the
 alsa version" ? 
Thats a liberal quote...
But sorry, I don't think I can write what I ment any clearer... (well, you
can remove the comma after "well", but thats as clear as I can make it,
english is not my native language either. :-) )
...
   However, if I
were you, I would use sndlib, portaudio, jack, or some other
 higher level audio input/output library instead of oss or alsa.  Well, all the
files, that I will play, will have the same charactistics, do I
 really need to bother with an hi-level API [2] ? 
Why not?
...

 [1] I noticed that a lot of applications still use OSS, and I thought it was
 because the migration to ALSA was too complex. 
That might be one reason. But if it works well with OSS, thats often good
enough. Its a shame it sometimes is hard to make OSS programs work with
jack though, but thats a problem that goes for alsa programs as well.
(Actually, its worse with alsa programs.)
...
  [2] Futhermore I am afraid that an hi-level API will
produce time drifts in
 the playing.

No, I don't think so. Many people use portaudio, it could be your best
choise.