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An Introduction to Linux Audio (O'Reilly)

An Introduction to Linux Audio (O'Reilly)

Posted Aug 3, 2007 14:13 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054)
In reply to: An Introduction to Linux Audio (O'Reilly) by ken
Parent article: An Introduction to Linux Audio (O'Reilly)

Seems to me that your issues are addressed in the article. Be sure to read all
the way through to the JACK part. (Despite being an additional layer, JACK is
specifically intended for realtime audio.)

BTW, the emu10k, which I also have, is actually a rather high-capability chip.
Some people like to take advantage of all those capabilities, and ALSA allows
that while OSS doesn't. Don't blame ALSA for the fact that your sound chip has
more capabilities than you need.


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An Introduction to Linux Audio (O'Reilly)

Posted Aug 3, 2007 14:15 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Quoting myself:
"Don't blame ALSA for the fact that your sound chip has more capabilities than
you need."

... or that alsamixer doesn't have a very good/smart user interface.

An Introduction to Linux Audio (O'Reilly)

Posted Aug 3, 2007 23:52 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Alsamixer is fine.

It's a low-level way to interact directly with the mixer settings present on your sound card.

The problem is that it's currently the _best_ way to do the mixer settings. There needs to be a higher level way of interacting with it. A standardized something-or-other that effectively abstracts away the differences in audio cards.

A generic way to interact with audio cards can never effectively suit the needs for advanced users, hence the need for alsamixer and the need for something that accurately reflects the capabilities of the hardware.

Our problem is that there isn't anything for people that don't give a crap about the capabilities of their audio card and just want to make recordings.

An Introduction to Linux Audio (O'Reilly)

Posted Aug 4, 2007 8:01 UTC (Sat) by bersl2 (guest, #34928) [Link]

The problem is that it's currently the _best_ way to do the mixer settings. There needs to be a higher level way of interacting with it. A standardized something-or-other that effectively abstracts away the differences in audio cards.
HAL, perhaps?

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