i810 audio fixes 1/2

[Chris Morgan]

On Wednesday 21 April 2004 6:29 pm, Ryan Underwood wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 05:41:34PM -0400, chmorgan at charter.net wrote:
> > >like "play this wave file".  The major remaining drawback >is latency;
> > >click on button in app, hear sound 2 seconds later when >scheduler
> >
> > This is why we have sound servers like jack.  Any delay is likely due
> > to not having a fully callback based architecture in the app.
>
> JACK doesn't provide the full functionality of a high level sound
> server.  There is a reason for that; the functionality does not belong
> in a streams multiplexer like JACK.  Nor does streams multiplexing
> functionality belong in a high level app.  Trying to combine the two is
> why the sound servers have been such a huge source of frustration for
> users of the two major free desktop environments.
>

The issues with arts and esd are that by their very design they are unsuitable 
for professional audio use.  Its easier to add things to the lower latency 
design of jack than it is to improve the latency of blocking io apps like 
arts and esd.

What high level functionality do you speak of besides automatic sample rate 
conversion?  I'd imagine network transparency could even be bolted onto jack 
if necessary.

> > >Maybe a better thing to do is rewrite arts/esd library >interfaces to
> > >omit the daemons altogether.  That way the daemons can go >away, but the
> > >existing applications can be trivially migrated.
> >
> > I've heard that arts is being phased out from kde use in the near
> > future.  I'm not sure what might replace it though.
>
> Do you have a reference for that?  aRts is rather full featured compared
> to the competition.  Its only achilles heel is the fact that it has no
> low latency capability and that it suffers from blocking /dev/dsp like
> every other high level sound server at the moment.

I've no reference.  Just chatting with some kde guys on freenode about it.  
Who knows if they were just pulling my leg.  Considering that 
arts-project.org is unmaintained for years at a time its probably closer to 
truth than not.

Chris