[Klug-general] Linux Sound Programming

[Karl Lattimer]

> All of them, with perhaps the exception of ALSA seems like it was 
> dreampt up in someone's potting shed as an answer to a problem that 
> never should have existed.

I might forward that little snippet to Lennart Poettering... He loves
Pulseaudio abuse :P

Developing for pulseaudio is no different from developing for ALSA as
pulse is just a way of managing all the gumpf that goes on, giving you
application specific volume controls and various other nifty features
which make sound useful to the desktop user. It is akin to CoreAudio on
macosx but with some extra features I think makes it pretty darn
nifty...

Considering that Lennart, one of the most talented developers in the
world if you don't believe me, check his stats;
http://www.ohloh.net/accounts/mezcalero would have designed this in a
potting shed is a pretty big insult considering; "Your search - george
prowse - did not match anything." on Ohloh.net

Pulseaudio may not have been perfect through the development, but it's
getting pretty damn close to where it is supposed to be.

Just to clairfy the "problem that never should have existed";

* ALSA and OSS lock the sound hardware
* System sounds at the same volume as the movie you're watching
* Multiple applications using the sound hardware causing blocking e.g.
play a game for an hour and all the system sounds that happened during,
playback one after the other.
* Real time mixing of audio channels

ALSA is a great way of communicating with the hardware but it provides
no user space management of the audio.

BR,
K