On Wed, 22 May 2002 12:07:00 +0100 John Richard Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 May 2002 04:04, you wrote: > > Anyone else notice that from the Control Center -> Look n Feel -> > > System notifications, that if you preview an AU sound file that it > > not only doesn't play, but you lose sound until the next time KDE > > is restarted. Is this a known bug or just something about my setup? > > Thanks! ;-) > > > I read with interest and have used myself many of the anachronisms > mentioned, but quite honestly I do not understand what the > relationships are with one another. For instance Alsa, OSS, aRts, etc > etc. I wonder whether someone could write a short potted > history/technical explanation of what they actually do and how they > relate. > > John > -- well i'm much f a newbie about this too, but i'll try to say that i *guess* they are, and then some willing soul with better understanding than me will correct me. ok. OSS ( Open Sound System ) and ALSA ( Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ) are, basically, sets of drivers. they are both what CUPS is to printing. packages that contain drivers for as much devices as possible. some cards are supported by OSS, some other by ALSA and a lot of them are supported by both. you should have noticed a recent post from civileme, stating that it's a very common issue that some people can't get their sound to work right because they have both alsa and oss enabled. this is, having two active drivers, trying to drive the same device. ( i had this problem in 8.1 too ) as for aRTs.. uhmm as far as i can tell, it's a sound server that provides realtime mixing to enable several sound-related programs to work at once ( kinda like having two instances of xmms playing songs simultaneously, compared to getting a 'soundcard busy' when you launch the second xmms ) my guess is that aRTs connects directly to the sound driver. and opens up a server port to let any program wanting to play sound to connect to that server and play it there. aRTs will receive sounds from all applications, mix them up and play them thru the soundcard, so you can hear the stuff simultaneously... DISCLAIMER: all of this stuff COULD and PROBABLY IS dead wrong ;o) anyway, i hope it helps to clear you out a bit .. Damian
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