Has anyone ever thought of implementing a library for transfer of audio across networks? The API could be similar to JACK but would allow inter-host communication. This library would simplify the routing of audio across networks by solving synchronization issues etc. Therefore this RFC is closely related to the "Audio routing issues for Linux" discussion.
Background of this idea is a distributed audio system e.g. for a radio studio where we have multiple audio interfaces and computers involved, some doing audio processing, others generate the DAB stream. All these devices are connected via a single network. The problem is very similar to the inter-process audio routing, as a network-routable audio channel is not so different from a locally routable audio channel. There might be some additional properties: 1. The channels need a network wide unique flow number for identification. 2. Output channels have an associated list of destination hosts. 3. Network channels can be dynamically allocated respectively requested by the application. 4. Network channels can be dynamically removed. During the last year I have implemented a library that does such a thing for a custom, synchronous network. I am thinking of porting the library to for FireWire or maybe even Ethernet. (I am talking of low latency: 2.6ms packets, 10 ms end to end delay + I am aware that Ethernet does not provide QoS nor synchronization) Do you think this idea is completely out of scope here? Is there a library that does something comparable? (CoreAudio/DirectSound) Regards, Men