On Thursday 21 August 2003 02:23 pm, Anne Wilson wrote:
> I don't have anything at all about ALSA. I have two entries
> concerning External Midi Device. As I told Steffen, the second
> (selected one) looks absolutely normal, showing EMU10K1 Midi, but the
> first one has
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]@e - External Midi Port - but instead of o there is a small
> square.
>
> This is an Audigy Platinum, btw, in case that makes any difference
> (don't see why it should).
>
> I'm puzzled about this ALSA bit. Why am I getting no reference to
> ALSA? Any ideas?
There are two different sound driver architectures for Linux. OSS and ALSA.
I use Alsa because I read that OSS is older and supposedly not as good. You
might be using OSS in which case, you can install Alsa and you should be able
to switch over to it and your sound problems might improve. My own sound
card was originally detected and set to OSS but I switched it, again because
I read that Alsa was better.
snip from a posting:
--cut--
> Philosophically (and technically) speaking, are there real advantages for
> me to install alsa (other than the above) when OSS/free works for me? I
If OSS works for you, then no. ALSA's primary advantages are:
[common]
- separation of kernel and user-space code [all]
- ALSA library can provide more functionality to
applications (format conversions, sharing soundcard
resources, dsp plugins)
- benefits ALSA-native apps
[alsa-kernel/alsa-driver]
- better driver architecture
- more shared code between drivers for
different soundcards
-> fixes and improvements to common code affect all
drivers
-> drivers behave more uniformly
- benefits both ALSA-native and apps using OSS-emulation
- support for pro-level soundcards without performance problems
- for instance handling devices that only support
noninterleaved buffer layout
- befefits ALSA-native apps (and in some cases also
apps using OSS-emulation)
[alsa-lib]
- better API for applications [alsa-lib]
- more flexible configuration of various parameters
- well-designed API for acquiring realtime status
information (for various playback/capture
synchronation purposes)
- benefits ALSA-native apps
So shortly put, ALSA provides a better framework for writing drivers and
for developing audio applications. When comparing OSS/Free and ALSA from
an end-user's point of view, it comes down to the quality of the drivers
for the soundcard type in question, and the specific applications that are
used. Some OSS/Free drivers are very good and support all OSS API
features. If this is the case and all apps seem to work ok, you don't have
much to gain from switching to ALSA... yet.
By Kai Vehmanen
--
Bryan Phinney
Software Test Engineer
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