ALSA 1.0.17-rc1 Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ALSA 1.0.17-rc1 Released

Four months after ALSA 1.0.16 was released, the wizards of modern-day Linux sound have released ALSA 1.0.17-rc1. This release has a plethora of new work -- in excess of 500 changes...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjUxMw

[apaige]

How about a hypertext link to the actual download page :P

[mycroes]

When said with words like 'wizards of modern sound' I now really feel I have to comment on this... I have been using alsa for ages, until recently I read some stuff about oss, the real oss that has been developed in the last 10 years. I really don't mind if people have a personal opinion about programming practices, or things like that, but according to different people alsa is hard to use for programmers, and oss is a lot better. I also noticed lately that there's about no app that doesn't support alsa, but does support oss. Also my personal experience is that with oss I have the feeling I'm in control of my audio again, able to set what output is what channel without any hassle. So what I'd like to see instead of fancy words about alsa, is an objective in-depth comparison of alsa and oss. Right now I'm not planning on using alsa, I don't see any real use for alsa over oss except that the oss build system is stupid, but on the other hand I don't need 5 additional packages to be able to actually do something with my sound again (which seems to be needed when using alsa)... So now let's do that comparison, please?

[Louise]

Maybe it is a stupid question, but does PulseAudio depricate ALSA?

[deanjo]

Maybe it is a stupid question, but does PulseAudio depricate ALSA?


Nope, here is a good diagram showing where PulseAudio lies in the linux's audio structure.

http://rudd-o.com/archives/2007/11/05/how-pulseaudio-works/

[NeoBrain]

Maybe it is a stupid question, but does PulseAudio depricate ALSA?

It's designed to not depricate it...
However, PulseAudio is just in such an early state yet that it only supports stereo sound and thus leaves out configuration of surround systems (without hacking config files) and especially bass adjustment.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I see in it as an end user.

[deanjo]

It's designed to not depricate it...
However, PulseAudio is just in such an early state yet that it only supports stereo sound and thus leaves out configuration of surround systems (without hacking config files) and especially bass adjustment.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I see in it as an end user.

Pulseaudio is not designed to depreciate Alsa or OSS. Alsa or OSS is still required to get "bare to the metal" with the card.

[apaige]

Dudes, it's deprecate.

[deanjo]

Dudes, it's deprecate.

Dude, PulseAudio does not do hardware device drivers. It's a sound server.

Right from their own description.


In a typical installation scenario under Linux, the user configures ALSA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture) to use a virtual device provided by PulseAudio. Thus, applications using ALSA will output sound to PulseAudio, which then uses ALSA itself to access the real sound card. PulseAudio also provides its own native interface to applications that want to support PulseAudio directly, as well as a legacy interface for ESD applications, making it suitable as a drop-in replacement for ESD.
For OSS applications, PulseAudio provides the padsp utility, which substitutes device files such as /dev/dsp, tricking the applications into believing that they have exclusive control over the sound card. In reality, their output is rerouted through PulseAudio.

[apaige]

Ahem, I was only pointing out the fact that no-one spelled deprecate correctly :)

[deanjo]

Ahem, I was only pointing out the fact that no-one spelled deprecate correctly :)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/depreciate

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deprecate

deprecate is very different from depreciate

Nice try though

[Louise]

So PulseAudio is a set of filters on top of ALSA?

[NeoBrain]

Ahem, I was only pointing out the fact that no-one spelled deprecate correctly :)

Depending on what he wanted to say it could also be 'depreciate'...
The word isn't that much a part of my active english vocabulary (I'm german) and thus I looked it up. However, I then got mislead by Louise and wrote that one wrong, too :D
So, either deprecate or depreciate.
Point is, PulseAudio weakens ALSA in such a way that you lose many benefits as e.g. surround sound and single sound chanel (e.g. bass) adjustment because PA doesn't support them yet.

EDIT: okay, the depreciate-deprecate thing has actually been said already above I see...
strange how many posts get submitted while you're writing an own answer :/

[NeoBrain]

So PulseAudio is a set of filters on top of ALSA?

If an application requests sound output e.g. via ARTS, the request first is led to the pulseaudio-ARTS backend. Then, the pulseaudio server is contacted which (maybe after some software mixing) redirects the sound data to the actual sound system in use, e.g. ALSA.
I don't know if this description is completely accurate and correct, but it gives quite a good understanding of what's going on when PA is used, I hope.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and the point of PulseAudio is to make all applications able to use one sound system, even when they were written for a different one than the one in use. I.e. ARTS, ESD, Jack, OSS, etc. applications can be run using ALSA-only.

[Regenwald]

surround sound in pa?
read this...
http://blogs.gnome.org/rodrigo/2008/06/05/pulseaudio-in-opensuse/

[NeoBrain]

surround sound in pa?
read this...
http://blogs.gnome.org/rodrigo/2008/06/05/pulseaudio-in-opensuse/

Ah okay, then they finally got it. However, with this you still can't adjust the bass volume and I really don't like it that I have to turn my music that loud to understand anything that the whole house can hear my bass :)
I'm better off using plain ALSA anyways, works like a charm ;)

[d2kx]

No Creative X-Fi support? Great! This company has become a real joke. For those that have read the news some weeks ago, daniel_k has been threatened by Creative, again. As much as I like my Audigy 2 ZS, especially with the better snd_emu10k1 driver when compared to the official Creative Windows driver, I will not buy a card from them again. I'd recommend the ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 for PCIe which does not cost too much.

[etymxris]

What I'd really like to see is AC3 real time encoding actually work without sputtering constantly, and support software mixing. I'm really surprised more people don't ask for this feature equivalent to "Dolby Digital Live." It's the only way to get a surround signal out of your digital out port except for DVDs that have already encoded the audio.

[deanjo]

What I'd really like to see is AC3 real time encoding actually work without sputtering constantly, and support software mixing. I'm really surprised more people don't ask for this feature equivalent to "Dolby Digital Live." It's the only way to get a surround signal out of your digital out port except for DVDs that have already encoded the audio.


Well you can do it, It requires the use of Jack but it does work. The reason you won't see it in linux distro's is simply because of the patent issues with it, the same reasons why you don't see bundled mp3 support with most major distro's "out of the box".

http://essej.net/ac3jack/

[Jimmy]

Like ATI, until it works, I won't buy Creative again. Also, ATI/AMD is much more on the bandwagon than Creative, and I'm not on the ATI wagon yet.

The only reason I have ATI and Creative hardware is because they worked well enough on Windows. Now that I use a Linux OS they just aren't viable choices despite all the evangelism.

[Jimmy]

Also, although it may be disappointing to still not see better Creative support in ALSA, the change log doesn't look all that short to me. This seems more like a ALSA win and a Creative lose, IMHO.