> What type of system do you want? If latency is not important, which > its not to most "audio apps for linux" (they are typically of the xmms > genre), esound is fine, artsd is cleaner and alsa-server is even more > elegant and much more general purpose. If the kinds of facilities > offered by CoreAudio (or ASIO+Rewire to give a different example) > matter to you, then you've got to use the right architecture, and apps > which understand and participate in that architecture.
I guess I forgot to answer your question. I want a system which will provide the best latency, efficiency, and audio resource sharing ability. All of that being out-of-box experience. In another words, once I install Linux OS, I would love to have a system that does not need any tinkering for it to be able to provide me with absolutely best audio performance I can possibly squeeze out of my hardware regardless whether it is playing a desktop bleep warning, or doing complex audio processing. While I greatly appreciate the ongoing efforts in creating new Linux audio apps (myself being a part of that), it is rather frustrating for me to must have a specific application and only then be able to harness the full potential of my audio system. Audio apps, such as XMMS are nothing more than entertainment stuff, and for all that I care, they mean very little to me outside that realm. So when I mention audio apps, I mean serious audio-capture/processing/music-making/reproduction stuff. To give you an analogy: I want to have a car that when I drive it off the dealer's parking lot, does everything it can possibly ever do, rather than a car that will, for instance, go as fast as its engine allows ONLY once you install an extra spoiler on the back, because otherwise the car would fly off the road. If this makes any sense... It seems like all other aspects of Linux are changing every day while not being shy of completely changing overnight, but here we are stuck with the same architecture that has been provided to us initially for completely different purposes, trying to push it way beyond its limit...(please correct me if I am wrong) Cheers! Ico