| From: | Rudi Chiarito |
| Date: | 23 Aug 2000 at 17:13:11 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Ami Sound System ? |
On Wed, Aug 23, 2000 at 01:33:31PM +0300, Sinan Gurkan wrote:
> Will it be a Linux API (ALSA, Esound, e.t.c) port or an AHI port?
If you take a look at them, they all miss something - at the moment.
ALSA, AFAIK, has no positional sound and doesn't allow multiple programs
to access /dev/dsp at the same time - I have an i810-based system, ALSA
is the most reliable way to get sound on it, but I can't play an MP3 and
a sample file at the same time.
Esound has caused nothing but problems to me with an Ensoniq AudioPCI
board (judging by bug reports on the GNOME bug tracking service, I'm not
the only one) and it has a very limited scope anyway: it's just a daemon
that multiplexes samples from multiple applications to one stream that
goes to /dev/dsp. It can't be used for anything serious - it doesn't even
look like it was designed for anything more sophisticated than outputting
beeps and other samples from GNOME, KDE & co. If there's any support for
more advanced tasks like synchronization, let alone MIDI and DSP-like
functionality, I must have missed it completely.
Then there's OpenAL, which seems interesting, but is still in its very
early stages. It has positional audio, but there's no support for MIDI or
CD/DVD playback. Probably perfect for games and some multimedia
applications, but not adequate for some musicians, I fear.
Of all the Linux APIs, ALSA seems to me the most promising one, but
there's still work to be done.
As to AHI, to the best of my knowledge it lets you play/record samples
with mixing and DSP-like effects, so it is functionally a step ahead of
ALSA. But there's no MIDI and more advanced stuff.
> What do u think ?
You'll have to ask the audio team about their plans. All I know is that
at the moment there's no satisfactory existing standard that meets the
needs of most users, from those who just want to play MP3s to the serious
musician going through the game addict and the beginner musician.
Oh, there are Microsoft's Direct* standards, but for some reason I don't
expect them to be excellent, although most of the work was done by
ex-Blue Ribbon people. ;))