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On 06/12/2009 09:00 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: |
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> [...] |
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> nothing with none exception. I had to set up dmix a long time ago, then it |
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> worked automagically.. but blocking apps? nope. |
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Without dmix everything blocks. After I've set it up, I was still |
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ending up with applications going silent while some other sound was |
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playing; not working as advertised. Resampling is higher latency and |
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more CPU intensive too, but that mattered only on my old system though. |
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Another important factor is that with ALSA I had sound skips during |
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heavy CPU activity. With OSS4 the sound is always playing smoothly, no |
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matter what. I've never had a skip. I once even got a system lock-up |
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caused by ATI's fglrx driver but OSS4 had the music still playing even |
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though the whole system had gone to nirvana. |
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Another factor for me (but I guess most others aren't affected) is that |
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I like the OSS API much better. I wrote a minimal wav player in 10 |
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minutes. Have you ever looked at the ALSA API? Don't :P It's a piece |
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of crap. There are literally thousands of functions, all doing the same |
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thing but still not quite right... Also, OSS is standard across |
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different Unix-like systems, while ALSA is Linux-only. All this (and |
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especially the easy to code for OSS API) results in OSS support in |
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applications to work quite better (Wine, for example). |
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So to sum it up, OSS looks like the better system to me. I never had |
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problems with it and therefore I always recommend it. |
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> Sound daemons like arts or esd - yes, those blocked sound and were a pain in |
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> the ass. |
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Maybe I understood something else with "blocking". What I mean is |
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having one application going silent after another one plays something |
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else. For example, AMSN would stop playing chat sounds when I was |
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watching a YouTube video. To get non-blocking sound (if that's what you |
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mean with "blocking"), I had to do the exact opposite of what you did: |
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use arts and/or esd. At some point I had enough and tried to give OSS4 |
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a try. I liked it and stayed with it. Worked out of the box without |
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needing to configure anything. |
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