jack audio driver

chrismorgan at rcn.com chrismorgan at rcn.com
Tue Oct 8 15:09:43 CDT 2002


> 
> From: Eric Pouech <eric.pouech at wanadoo.fr>
> Date: 2002/10/08 Tue PM 03:48:04 EDT
> To: Chris Morgan <cmorgan at alum.wpi.edu>
> CC: wine-devel at winehq.com
> Subject: Re: jack audio driver
> 
> Chris Morgan a écrit :
> > 
> > I have an audio driver for the jack audio server,
> > http://jackit.sourceforge.net.  This is a callback based server, so each time
> > the server needs audio data it executes a client callback function.  I was
> > wondering if there was any interest in having this driver as part of mainline
> > wine code as an example of how to write a wine audio driver for a callback
> > based architecture.
> well, it depends what you look at
> jack way well be the standardized API for audio application
> interoperability on Linux
> but, some folks may argue that arts may well become the same
> as of today, I don't like the number of sound drivers that we already
> have (OSS, alsa, arts, nas) just for linux
> it, of course, reflects the mess in low level audio interface in linux

It really is a mess.  It seems clear that we should do away for the most part with having applications interface directly with sound drivers like oss/alsa, and instead go through sound servers like arts/jack/etc.  In technical aspects a callback based architecture is far superior to a polling based architecture.  It has a lower latency and enforces a cleaner sound implementation on applications.  What I haven't seen yet is a widely used audio server that people agree upon.  Someone really needs to take the lead and start pushing a callback based sound server that is under active development(arts appears not to be) that is not kde/gnome specific.</rant>

> what I really fear is the real maintenance of those drivers
> as of today, OSS is maintained, I cannot really tell the same for the
> others
> it's never a bad idea to share code, but I fear we're not going to be
> able to maintain all the drivers (but we don't maintain them all today
> anyway)
> so go for it
> (sorry for thinking while writing ;-)

Wonder when we can phase out the OSS driver and concentrate on the ALSA one.  Seems like a waste to support two drivers that fulfill the same role.

Chris





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