Rumblings in the Linux Audio World

[DanL]

I don't know if you've noticed, but OSS4 looks like a dying project. The architectures are bogus? Won't fix HDA and X-Fi? This covers about 95% of all new sound chips out there!

Just because Hannu won't add quirks for every hardware configuration out there doesn't mean OSS4 is dead. Actually, I believe that was the point he was making in that blog post. What does the 'O' in OSS stand for? Open When we have to resort to this to deal (and deal very poorly) with the HDA Azalia standard (using the word 'standard' very loosely), then vendor lock-in is being achieved.

[deanjo]

And ALSA has too much latency (I shoot with the gun and hear the *BAM* later), the sound skips when there's heavy system load, there's no freaking per-application volume level (for heaven's sake, IT'S 2009!) and sound stops when an OSS-only app tries to play something at the same time as something else.

Sorry dude, that is your kernel config. I can have amarok playing without a skip under 100% load across 4 cores and heavy disk i/o without a hiccup with alsa across a multitude of cards, 8788, AC97's, intelHD's, even a x-fi. As for per application settings most applications now days take care of the signal level before it even gets passed to alsa. As we speak I'm running amarok, kaffiene, flash video all with their own adjustable volume levels while compiling a new kernel. No pulse, no arts, no gstreamer, no esd, just pure alsa.

[BlackStar]

Just because Hannu won't add quirks for every hardware configuration out there doesn't mean OSS4 is dead. Actually, I believe that was the point he was making in that blog post. What does the 'O' in OSS stand for? Open When we have to resort to this to deal (and deal very poorly) with the HDA Azalia standard (using the word 'standard' very loosely), then vendor lock-in is being achieved.

Unfortunately, ignoring HDA *does* make OSS4 effectively dead. It doesn't matter if the HDA standard is a piece of crap, because right now every single laptop and every single motherboard comes with an HDA chip (exceptions are within the error margin).

OSS4 ignoring HDA because it's crap is equivalent to the kernel ignoring ACPI because it's crap. Neither can afford to do this, if they wish to remain relevant.

Besides, ALSA manages to support pretty much every HDA vendor out there. How does this translate into a "vendor lock-in"?

[Wyatt]

It seems every time I come back to Phoronix, I fall straight into the trap of reading threads like this, where the respondents are so up in each others' grilles that it's insulting to my intelligence to attempt to digest it. I won't air any names, but people in this thread that should know better are getting needlessly emotional.

Look at the comments on TFA: Insane Coder, dawhead, and Hannu even seem to be coming to some tacit agreement on the state of things, and they do so while maintaining a modicum of tact. It's far from the ideal that a "pure technical debate" would have, but I think it's reasonably close to the best of which fallible humans are capable.

As for this discussion, I get a sense that some of you feel that because a solution works for yourself, it's fine for everyone. One point that keeps coming up in the article is user choice and that there are no perfect solutions. You know, just saying.

From an end-user's standpoint OSS4 is pretty decent; I have a couple sound devices that wouldn't work were it not for it. ALSA is sort of okay, too; I have some things that have worked for a long time because of it. Neither is a silver bullet nor adequate for all use scenarios.

[hax0r]

I wish that nvidia produced great sound cards and supported them on Linux the same way that they support their 3D implementation, that is, replace the current utter crap stack with proprietary code that works great.

[deanjo]

I wish that nvidia produced great sound cards and supported them on Linux the same way that they support their 3D implementation, that is, replace the current utter crap stack with proprietary code that works great.

*sigh* sadly they killed soundstorm

[deanjo]

Here is an idea, wouldn't it be nice if Creative make the X-fi DSP available to openCL?

[kraftman]

I wish that nvidia produced great sound cards and supported them on Linux the same way that they support their 3D implementation, that is, replace the current utter crap stack with proprietary code that works great.

Why didn't you mention 2D, stability and QT4 support some time ago (let's say year after KDE 4.0 release)? It's not so great right? I can just imagine what crappy their sound drivers could be. What's exactly wrong with the current stack in your opinion?

[hax0r]

What's exactly wrong with the current stack in your opinion?

Everything is good actually for me , just a usual bash.

[kraftman]

Everything is good actually for me , just a usual bash.

Good to heat that However, it will be perfect if every company will make drivers for Linux in Linux way, because if devs themselves have to write drivers for many sound cards etc. it may be hard. Just wishful thinking.