Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@×××.de> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 08:07:21PM -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>
>> >>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>> >>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>> >>
>> >> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
>> > suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
>>
>> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
>> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
>> also by default uses PA.
>
> KDE has the phonon layer, which features a PA useflag, but also a flag for
> gstreamer and vlc.
>
>> dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in
>> my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it
>> will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles.
>
> This seems like a dumb question (for I was a strict PA denier until recently
> and have been using alsa-only since always), but does PA handle OSS
> applications better than alsa/dmix?

I don't think I use any application that doesn't support PulseAudio,
GStreamer or ffmpeg. Both GStreamer and ffmpeg can use PulseAudio as
backend. Heck, even Xine-lib (which I haven't used in years) supports
PulseAudio.

That being said, PulseAudio runs on top of ALSA, so I don't see how
the first could handle OSS apps better than the second.

>  Whenever I want to use sidplay, which only
> speaks OSS, I need to stop all other audio programs (e.g. press Stop in the
> Clementine player if it's only paused), or else /dev/dsp was busy.

With PulseAudio I haven't had none of these problems in ages. But
again, all my used apps support PA either directly or indirectly.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México