Men Muheim wrote: > 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)
I wondered if it would be possible to write a JACK driver (i.e. replacement for current ALSA driver) that would stream the audio over a network. The driver is a shared object, so it's technically possible. I was thinking of the timing issues. > Do you think this idea is completely out of scope here? Is there a > library that does something comparable? (CoreAudio/DirectSound) DirectSound does not offer that possibility. Peter > Regards, > > Men > >
