2 clarifications: >It is not logical for every program to write support for esd, artsd, jack, >alsa, etc. Programs should write to ALSA and let ALSA do software mixing if >required. Windows provided this since DirectX (3?). Solaris provides this too >(esd apparently doesn't block on Solaris).
Windows provides this, true. But most "prosumer" and professional applications do *not* use it. The Windows kernel mixer was the curse of pro-ish apps for a long time, hence driver models like ASIO and now WDM. AFAIK, the new WDM drivers are generally used by apps in ways that preclude "sharing" with other apps, and certainly ASIO drivers cannot be shared in this way. >One of the big reasons this is affecting me is that Java sound will not work >unless you have a hardware mixer. My understanding is that the Sun folks seem >to think that it is wrong to have to implement many different ways to create >sound when the sound library (ALSA) should do it for them - the way it works >in Windows/Solaris. I completely agree with them. ALSA is *a* sound library. There are lots of things that it doesn't contain, and its written around a fairly specific programming paradigm. There are those of us (many people on LAD) who believe that its too hard to fit a callback-driven model into the existing ALSA design, and that its therefore better to implement such a model outside of ALSA. You see, if all apps are written to use the ALSA API, that's going to be great for the purposes you have in mind, but totally awful for those of us who want our audio apps to work in a sample synchronous way and ignorant of the ultimate routing of their data. Many of us don't think that an API based on the open/close/read/write paradigm is appropriate for real time streaming media. All that being said, I'd love to see the smix plugin implemented and available, if only because it would allow ALSA native apps to participate in a JACK system, albeit without sample synchronous behaviour. --p ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Get the new Palm Tungsten T handheld. Power & Color in a compact size! http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?palm0002en _______________________________________________ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
