esd, sound (was Re: Suggestions for Breezy... )

[Justin Mason]

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Alexandre FRANKE writes:
> > Additionally, I think it would be a good idea to use dmix for sound
> > rather than using a sound server, as dmix doesn't require applications
> > to be written for it specifically as does esd.  I've noticed many people
> > have been asking about setting up Hoary to allow non-esd sound, so this
> > seems like something that should be considered for Breezy.
> 
> Gnome 2.12 (which I think will be used in Breezy, as Gnome's schedule
> is almost the same as Ubuntu's) no longer uses esd but gstreamer.  See
> http://www.gnome.org for further information about that.

eek -- in my opinion dropping esd/polypaudio would be bad!

if I recall correctly, according to ALSA people, automated setup of dmix
will not always work, due to differences in sound hardware requiring
different "magic numbers" in the asound.conf file for period_size,
buffer_size, rate, periods etc.  In my experience, incorrect values here
on my Thinkpad T40 *almost* work but produce stuttering and crackling as
soon as the CPU becomes busy or X activity takes place.

I've found that if you have sound hardware that requires software mixing,
there really is no reliable way to ensure that multiple apps can access
the sound hardware, other than via esd, or polypaudio assuming the issues
that had in Hoary are fixed.  Everything else seems to leave *some* app
unable to play sound unless it grabs /dev/dsp exclusively.  (the
Flash plugin in particular is an offender here.)

By using polypaudio (or "aoss esd"), it's possible to use *both* ALSA and
esd, even with dmix if the user has configured that.

As a matter of interest, how do GNOME intend to support multiple apps
accessing non-hardware-mixing sound hardware with gstreamer? I was under
the impression that framework did not deal with that issue.

This old thread --
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2004-November/msg00600.html
- -- seems to indicate that they expect the distribution will take care of
that end with either a software mixing daemon, or ALSA dmix.

- --j.
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