Sound config both in and out.

[Till Varoquaux]

Things should be going one better actually. Dmix doesnt' prevent you
to run Arts/esd/whartever else on top of it.  It emulates a mixer. The
main problem before was that only app at a time could access the
soundcard. The trick to get mutliple application playing sounds was to
have talke to a "server" (esd,polypaudio,jack you name it) this server
would then mix them together and send them to the card. There where
many probems from applications wantiung a different server than the
one running (mainly esd/arts issue) or wanting to access directly to
the sound card (skype for instance AFAIK).

The situation isn't all bright though: many application, although
using using alas need to be made dmix aware (mplayer for instance..).
So to sum it up:
_Running esd w/o dmix=solution for breezy
_Running esd on top of alsa+dmix gives you a fallback: when the
applications want to access directly to your soudcard it might work
(knck on wood).
_Dmix only: is better since esd is known to have problems (lags for
instance) and running dmix +esd is just plain stupid for the long
term...

The idea is to switch to pure dmix ,hopefully. Otherwise: Dmix+esound.
This is currently under testing phase so apps not working should have
bug filled.

Till

P.S. I hope this was more or less corect. Since I'm not part of any of
the teams I might very wrong, Do take my words with a grain of salt

On 11/30/05, George Farris <farrisg at mala.bc.ca> wrote:
> I was reading through the details for using sound in Dapper.  It all
> seems a little messed up.  I realize it is a Linux issue.  I didn't
> really see anything that covered audio input only output.
>
> As I see it the issues are:
>
> Programs that used ESD
> Programs that use ALSA
> Programs that use OSS.
>
> I've have had a number of people ask how multiple programs are going to
> be handled.  Specifically, if one is running music through Rhythmbox and
> Skype is run will the system puke or what will happen?  With Breezy it
> is a major pain, Wine sound may or may not work, if I'm running Totem or
> RB, I can't fire up Skype without killing ESD.  Granted Skype is crap as
> far as sound support is involved but it still needs to be handled.
> Throw network audio on thin clients into the mess and it really gets
> confusing.
>
> Whatever happened to polyaudio, did it die a horrible death when
> confronted with all this crap?  Is there a strong consensus about the
> future of audio on Ubuntu.  With long term support this is going to be a
> really important issue.
>
> Consumer desktops need two things to work really well, Sound and Video.
> I believe Ubuntu has a fairly good grip on a lot of other desktop items
> but these two are pretty important.
>
> Is there other information other than whats on the wiki?  Does Ubuntu
> have a solid plan for sound support?
>
>
> --
> George Farris   farrisg at mala.bc.ca
> Malaspina University-College
>
>
>
>
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>