>I do know that ALSA is going to be replacing OSS in the kernel although from a
>system standpoint it makes more sense to be a little general with thing.
>
>It seems like high end applications require low latency. Would it be possible
>to create a sound server(arts) that fulfilled latency and other high end sound
>application requirements? As far as Jack is concerned, it appears that if Jack
>can do the same thing that arts can do, and it sounds that way for at least th
>e
>small amount of information I've read, then maybe the solution is to open
>discussion with arts people and jack people about merging the two?
what you're missing is that high end applications need *two* things:
1) low latency
2) synchronous execution
the latter is extremely important so that different elements in a
system do not drift in and out of sync with each other at any time.
i also don't think you understand how utterly different JACK's API is
from anything else in the Linux audio realm (except for PortAudio and
LADSPA). the model used by programs/systems like artsd *cannot*
support both of the requirements above. and an SE-API is quite hard to
use in many common audio program designs if you're used to
open/read/write/close.
we also need to consider a third characteristic - inter application
audio (and MIDI) routing. artsd does this, but not in a low latency
fashion.
>How does ALSA provide shared device access? Via a software mixer and multiple
>/dev/dsp's?
nope. via a shared-memory server and code in alsa-lib that moves audio
into the shared memory zone rather than directly to an audio interface.
>Either way, I think its about time people that knew what they wanted
>from high end sound apps, people writing games and people working on
>embedded applicatio ns started laying down a foundation for a unified
>sound architecture for linux wi th at least a basic standardized API.
i don't mean to sound harsh, but this is naive. there is no agreement
among any of these groups on what they want. ALSA *is* a standardized
API that is equivalent, roughly speaking, to the HAL layer in Apple's
CoreAudio. if people are willing to write to a HAL layer, ALSA is the
"basic standardized API" you're describing. but IMHO, thats not enough.
if you tried to impose CoreAudio on all linux audio developers, they'd
be screaming at the top of their voices, and it would never be
accepted. yet CoreAudio has clearly demonstrated its technical
superiority to everything else (including ALSA+linux, just maybe :)
and as an SE-API, is the only type of system that I can see that
satisfies the design goals/requirements for high-end audio.
--p
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