[geeks] Ubuntu sound question - esd w/alsa...

[Joshua Boyd]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 02:38:39PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> I didn't like OSS, and I had a license for the commercial release for
> many years.
> 
> My problems with OSS:
> 
> 	- its API didn't have full support for all sound functions demanded
> 	  by modern software
> 	- it didn't fully support hardware acceleration even on my now very
> 	  old Live! card
> 	- it didn't fully support the feature set of any card I had
> 	- it is an extra cost item that almost no one buys, so it cannot
> 	  server as a useful basis for distributing software with sound
> 	  support.  
> 
> The latter is the ultimate killer, because whatever we use as a UNIX
> sound standard has to come with all of the OS distributions by default
> so developers can rely on it being there.  This is doubly true for
> anything like games or commercial audio software.
> 
> That's why I said OSS is dead.  Effectively, it is, because almost no
> one has it.
> 
> Even if it were the best sound driver and API ever created, that's
> meaningless if the majority of UNIX systems don't have it.
> 
> UNIX sound support should be *better* than Windows.  Anyone who uses
> sound on Windows know how buggy, bloated, and overcomplicated the driver
> packages are these days.
> 
> > > ALSA is quite a bit better and more ambitious, even though it was
> > > rocky for a time.  Still needs more but it is getting better.
> > 
> > I'll say it was rocky.  The last time I tried it, it just plain wasn't
> > usable, period.
> 
> When was that and on what hardware?
> 
> I don't really like ALSA and was opposed to it initially, but I also
> didn't like OSS either.
> 
> I don't like ALSA because it is messy, its query functions are broken
> (i.e. ask it what devices and functions are present and it lies), and
> like OSS it also moves very slowly.
> 
> At the same time, ALSA does now work on all of the software I've tried
> it with, and uses most of my hardware's acceleration functions, though
> not nearly all of its feature set.
> 
> It's presentation of available devices is broken.  It lies and claims to
> have all kinds of virtual devices that really don't exist, resulting in
> your mixer panel being full of controls that do nothing.
> 
> The filesystem API for ALSA has a lot more functions and support for
> sound applications than the OSS standard, so I see OSS as a dead
> end even for that reason.
> 
> Unfortunately, the OSS standard is the only real multi-platform default,
> which is why a lot of drivers in other UNIX systems mimic how it works.
> 
> For example, I'm pretty sure FreeBSD's sound devices all mimic Linux OSS
> interfaces.  Let's put it this way, I never had to rewrite software for
> FreeBSD when using the Live! pcm driver.  I suppose it could have only
> been that one driver though.

OSS compatibility doesn't preclude having a decent driver model.  For
instance, ALSA offers compatibility to applications expecting OSS.  OK,
so their compatibility can potentially be problematic for a lot of
people.  I don't know what the issue is exactly, other than ALSA
configuration is in general confusing if you have to touch it because it
wasn't correct to start with.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/