Sound Server vs. Other Solutions?

[Jerry Haltom]

That was pretty slick, my 2 conditions. I meant 3 of course.

On Wed, 2004-12-15 at 19:16 -0600, Jerry Haltom wrote:
> The need for a sound server will always be present as two conditions
> hold true:
> 
> 1) All supported hardware is not multichannel.
> 2) Multiple software wants to play sounds at the same time.
> 3) Alsa doesn't do in-kernel mixing.
> 
> As of right now, all those conditions exist. Because of this, a sound
> server is necessary.
> 
> Most Gnome applications are programed to use the sound server in order
> to mix their audio. While this sound server is running it is using the 1
> audio channel mentioned above. When other non-ESD software comes along
> and decides not to use the provided sound server, and breaks because of
> it... what can we do? Reprogram that software? Tell the user to disable
> the sound server? Yeah, those are pretty much the options.
> 
> One obvious solution would be for ESD to shut itself off when it's not
> being used. This solution ignores the fact that audio needs to play when
> commanded to, and the startup time will introduce a delay in the audio.
> Bad.
> 
> On a brighter note, a replacement for ESD is being considered:
> polypaudio. It is ESD compatible. It probably won't solve your problems
> though.
> 
> What do you suggest be done about this?
> 
> The real solution is to introduce a common audio API that uses a server
> when and only when it is required. This API is most likely GStreamer. If
> somebody would go and fix all these "unsupported" applications to use
> GStreamer, the world would be a much happier place. ;)
> 
> On Wed, 2004-12-15 at 19:51 -0500, thully at umich.edu wrote:
> > I realize that Ubuntu uses the GNOME sound server to allow multiple programs
> > to use the sound device at once.  However, this does have problems with many
> > programs not in the main distribution.  Yes, I realize these are unsupported,
> > but
> > many people use them and want to be able to use them.  Is it possible for an
> > alternate solution, which doesn't interfere with third party programs as much,
> > to be used in Hoary?  I know of dmixer and some other similar things that allow
> > multiple sounds, why not use something like this which is compatible with more
> > applications?
> > 
> > 
> -- 
> Jerry Haltom <wasabi at larvalstage.net>
> 
> 
-- 
Jerry Haltom <wasabi at larvalstage.net>