Comment 227 for bug 371897
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#227 |
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7020100
(Get the code!)
(In reply to comment #120)
> LINUX/Unix sound system will basically consist of the following elements:
> - ALSA/OSS for hardware access
> - PulesAudio for desktop sound server
> - JACK for low latency professional needs
>
> Many issues with PulseAudio are already fixed or they are in work:
> - Coexistence of JACK and PulseAudio is one of the topics e.g. Fedora is
> working on.
> - KDE 4 just learn to use PulseAudio with Phonon
> - many latency issues are actually kernel issues
I am not the one who designs the Linux sound APIs, but there are number of flaws in this approach:
*) If I want gaming(a low latency audio application) I don't want to do something manually to get it. PulseAudio on a default Ubuntu setup gets me about 300 milliseconds latency. That is enough to make Tuxracer not fun. You can't have 5 solutions for 5 different applications. You need one solution for all of them. Windows can do it. MacOS can do it.
Likewise Wine users should not have to configure manually whether they want low latency(alsa plugin) or software mixing(pulse plugin). There has to be one solution for all.
*) Low latency audio in multiple apps worked with Alsa + Dmix. Before Pulse arrived, I could listen to my MP3s and play Counter Strike, and actually hear gunfire before I was dead. PulseAudio is a network daemon, which cannot get low latency by design without realtime hacks. Blaming that on kernel issues is the wrong way to work around design flaws IMHO.
*) If you write an app that claims it has a compatibility layer for Alsa, and 50% of the apps out there need adjustments(KDE, Skype, Wine, apparently even Tuxracer), then the compatibility layer is not actually compatible.
*) PulseAudio is like the 15th sound API on Linux. All the reasons cited why PulseAudio is good were cited for ESD and Arts before. I am still not convinced why Pulse is suddenly going to fix all that. ESD and Arts were dropped for good reasons. For a while SW mixing was done by dmix, until people went back in time and reinvented ESD and Arts under a different name.
/me anticipates the same flamewar in one or two years when Wine urgently needs to support, say, SpeedAudio, which will be the definite solution to all sound issues on Linux.