Re: [linux-audio-dev] LAAGA - main components

[Paul Davis]

>Right, from what you are saying (Paul) this means that we *must* have
>a single process that handles all the time-critical plugins.  Now what
>if that were part of ALSA ?
>
>That means that slightly less-critical apps could use the ALSA
>interface to address `busses' and plugins within that critical
>process.  This is likely to be much easier than trying to convince
>people to use another interface when everyone seems to be saying that
>ALSA is the future.

the problem is that you have to write to the busses in a time-synced
fashion which means using kind of IPC. the audio thread has to very
careful doing that. its not really about whether ALSA should support
it or - it would be great if it did. its whether or not it can be done
in a way that works for "less critical" apps as well as the ones that
need 1ms latencies.

>How far is this from what ALSA already has ?  I don't completely
>understand what these `aservers' are doing (someone please point me to
>docs if there are any).  Do they accept plugins at all ?

i don't understand much either, but i'm pretty certain they don't
accept plugins in the sense of dynamically loaded object modules.

--p