ALSA [Was: Paris summit]

[Lee Revell]

On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 11:28 +1000, James "Doc" Livingston wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-06-22 at 11:39 -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> > I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.  The entire open source world uses ALSA
> > - why can't the proprietary guys use it too?
> 
> If by "entire open source world" you mean Linux. ALSA is Linux-specific
> (it's what the L stands for), and OSS works on other *nix operating
> systems like the BSDs.
> 

Yes, I mean Linux.  Are Skype, Flash, and Teamspeak available for the
BSDs?  I somehow doubt this was a major consideration for these
developers.

> 
> > On Thu, 2006-06-22 at 09:08 +0200, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > > There are a lot of great reasons to use a good software mixing daemon
> > > instead of ALSA's dmix mess.
> > > 
> > 
> > How is it a mess?  What's wrong with it?  What reasons?
> 
> * ESD is network transparent

Good point, but a Polypaudio plugin for ALSA has been developed to make
ALSA apps network transparent.

> * dmix causes the first sound-using app to fork, and have a duplicate
> process

Are you sure about this?  I really don't think this is the case.

> * ESD runs completely in user-space

ALSA+dmix does everything that ESD does in userspace too - without the
need for an intermediate buffer for mixing.

> * ALSA is Linux-specific (above)
> 

Right, but I really don't think this is a problem.  There are tons of
apps with modular designs that can support any number of audio backends
- JACK, portaudio (v19), etc.

> and probably other things.
> 
> 
> > You still haven't explained exactly what's wrong with ALSA on a
> > technical level.  All I've seen so far is "I don't like it".
> 
> ESD sucks in many ways, and ALSA+dmix is better in a lot of respects.
> But that doesn't mean ALSA+dmix is better in every way (it's not), and
> it doesn't mean that other things couldn't be better than ALSA.
> 

I didn't claim it is better than ESD in every way.  But it's a hell of a
lot better from the user POV than using OSS and blocking the soundcard
from every other app.

It takes a day or two at most to port an OSS app to ALSA.  But users are
suffering for YEARS from these proprietary apps that rudely block the
sound device.

At the very least, implement multiple backends - OSS, ALSA, ESD, like
all good open source apps do.  But making your app OSS only is just
incredibly rude and lazy.

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> James "Doc" Livingston
> -- 
> "Never be afraid to tell the world who you are." -- Anonymous
> 
>