ALSA, OSS and the pointless of switching to Pulse [Was: Paris summit]

[Lee Revell]

On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 13:23 +0100, Paul Sladen wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2006, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > <quote who="Lee Revell">
> > > Do you expect Pulse to be the default sound system in Edgy?
> > I don't know. I've packaged it, but not yet uploaded it - we'll see.
> 
> Pulse is still a distraction though.  Pulse (nee Polypaudio) does nothing
> more than provide the same interface that 'esd' did.  (With a far less
> Googlable name, which is unhelpful to users trying to debug their sound
> issues).
> 
> Net gain: Zero (possibly negative).  What we need is a multiple-open OSS
> driver.  That hasn't happened because of LKML bickering about theoretical
> code that doesn't even exist and won't until it is written.
> 

The kernel guys will not allow mixing to happen in the kernel.

The only possible solution is to have /dev/dsp redirect ioctl()s to
userspace, do the mixing/routing/volume control in alsa-lib, then send
the audio back to kernelspace via ALSA ioctl()s.

It seems horribly inefficient compared to just porting /dev/dsp apps to
ALSA.

> Multiple-open OSS to an ALSA backend needs writing---there are no two ways
> about it.  Until everyone recognises that reality, then we are going to
> continue have these head-again-wall-slamming threads.
> 
>   ALSA: Great ultra low-level hardware-interface.
>   OSS: Great audio API.
>   Pulse: Yet-another-userspace-sound-mixing-daemon.

The only other possibility is for someone to improve ALSA's userspace
OSS emulation to the point that it works with every app.  But no one has
shown serious interest in this problem.

Has there ever been a userspace OSS emulation (esddsp, artsdsp, aoss)
that worked with *every* OSS app?

Lee

Lee