29 Jul
2005
29 Jul
'05
7:40 p.m.
On Saturday 30 July 2005 06:51, Christoph Eckert wrote:
This is an explanantion from kde-multimedia(a)kde.org as to just
why it would seem to be a problem...
The design is basically flawed for desktop audio since it
delegates real-time low-latency work loads through unix
pipes to the audio applications. You cannot expect all
audio applications to run real-time and you can not expect
users to apply custom patches that allow jack to hand out
real-time privileges.
As far as I can envisage, by the time KDE4 beta starts shipping
that all/most distros will also be shipping at least a 2.6.12
kernel with a rtlimit patched PAM. Certainly by the end of this
year.
If that means "least problematic" then sure, if "most mature"
also means most widely deployed for any audio work that matters
then the choice probably should be JACK.
I have no say
in the matter but I would
like to see something like qjackctl ported to KDE4 and
usable from within kcontrol, basically, Jack embedded into
the system from the ground up.
This will not happen. My general
question, to those who know far more than me, is
just what would be the ideal sound subsystem for KDE in
2006 seeing there is a clean slate and an opportunity to
get it right from the get go ?
I've been discussing this with Scott Wheeler on thios years
Linuxtag. Similar to Linus Torvalds, the KDE team simply
waits what will mature most until the day a decision must be
made. I guess JACK will *not* be an option for the KDE team
because
it's not configured on every distro per default and JACK
isn't platform independent.
It runs on Mac OSX and probably other unices using Portaudio
and consider the timeline for KDE4.
For this reasons, it seems to be more probable that
something
like gestreamer will be chosen, and gstreamer will then have
a JACK sink.
An extra complex layer on top of the one that really counts.
For audio stuff, I dislike it, I'd like to see
JACK beconimg a
standard desktop soundserver.
KDE4 has the opportunity (maybe) of doing this. Once another
subsytem gets into the SVN repository then JACK will never
become the default option. Right now, in mid 2005, there is a
small window of opportunity for JACK to become the default
sound server for one of the major linux desktop systems. If
this were to happen then we'd (linux) have half our future
desktops come by default with a world class professional audio
subsystem second to none. Hello Hollywood.
But gstreamer has some further advantages: It's
not specific
for audio only. For example (if I got it right) it can also
provide a video stream from one device to multiple
applications, so it also solves one problem JACK solved for
audio for video applications.
It kind of half solves both the audio and video issues.
Does anyone on this list use gstreamer to get Rosegarden,
hydrogen, ardour and JAMin to work together ?
Does gstreamer allow kino and cinelerra to work together ?
I personally would be happy if JACK would be chosen,
so we had
*one* *tru* solution for desktop as well as for professional
use, comparable to coreaudio on Mac OS X. But I fear that
there will be another decision and this will again delay
finding *the* *true* solution :( .
Fear the fear of a decision like this being made by folks that
do not use the wonderful ALSA/JACK enabled audio toolset that
we are all so familiar with on this list.
I include Scott Wheeler in the CC of this mail.
Thanks.
--markc