Wine Developers Fight Over PulseAudio Driver

[TechMage89]

Every layer added to your audio pipeline will add latency, to say nothing of excessive layering introducing unnecessary compatibility issues and bugs.

I would really like to see OSSv4 adopted as the de-facto standard. It has a simple API, includes software mixing and virtually everything anyone could want. I don't think Linux needs its own audio API just to be different from everyone else.

[RealNC]

Why and how? I mean what does it matter who provides the userspace part of the Linux audio stack.

It matters because now it's not guaranteed that PA is installed. So developers need to implement ALSA as well as PA support.

ALSA is for the drivers and PulseAudio does the mixing, filtering, routing and so on.

No, ALSA also does the mixing (dmix) and provides lots of plugins in libalsa. PA tries to fix the problems in those parts of ALSA, problems that should not exist to begin with. PA exists because of problems in ALSA.

Again, the focus is "problems in ALSA." There shouldn't be any.

From developers perspective ALSA doesn't matter as they either target GStreamer, OpenAL, Phonon... or PulseAudio directly because it's the de facto audio server on Linux.

That doesn't make it right.

[drag]

There should be no competition. There should only be one API. Top layers should be things like SDL, OpenAL, PortAudio, stuff like that. Third-party low-level APIs like PA should not exist. The existence of PA is proof of Linux's failure in audio.

Saying pulseaudio is a third party product is like saying that your X Server is a third party product.

"""There should only be one API. Top layers should be things like GTK, OpenGL, Motif, stuff like that. Third-party low-level APIs like Xserver should not exist. The existence of Xserver is proof of Linux's failure in graphics."""

A audio server performs a similar function to the display server. It provides a intelligent way to manage audio I/O and multiple applications.

I suffered through using Alsa for years. I did many advanced things like setup custom configurations to multiplex audio inputs and all sorts of junk like that. And I can tell you from experience that Linux audio is shit without Pulseaudio.

There is little proof needed beyond then the continued misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Pulseaudio show that there is still a large segment of the Linux user community that are not interested the least in understanding the technology of the software they are using and just run off of little more then emotionally fueled ignorance.

Every once and a while I run into something intelligent somebody says that shows that PA sucks in some way, but that's rare nowadays.

[ShadowBane]

PA exists due to ALSA's shortcomings. If the ALSA devs had gotten it right, there would never have been a need for PA. Unfortunately, ALSA didn't get it right, and now we have to deal with two low-level layers of audio instead of just one. What a mess. ALSA should have learned from OS X and Windows about how to do it right.

Windows (starting with vista) also runs a sound server that does similar stuff to what PA does but has less features. I can't speak to how the OS X audio system works as I have basically never used it let alone looked into how it worked.

Also, for those who are complainging about having one more API to target: Microsoft provides WASAPI DirectSound/DirectMusic, Media Foundation and Windows multimedia waveXxx and mixerXxx functions by default. This is beofore adding all of the third-party stuff like ASIO, gstreamer, phonon, SDL, etc.

I have found PA to be a huge benefit, running multiple sound devices or trying to do per-application volume control without it is painful to say the least.

[ShadowBane]

Every layer added to your audio pipeline will add latency, to say nothing of excessive layering introducing unnecessary compatibility issues and bugs.

If this is the case, tell me why pro audio stuff on linux tends to not support alsa directly. Also, if extra layers were bad things like ASIO and ReWire wouldn't exist on windows/mac.

[RealNC]

Saying pulseaudio is a third party product is like saying that your X Server is a third party product.

X doesn't try to replace an existing API.

"""There should only be one API. Top layers should be things like GTK, OpenGL, Motif, stuff like that. Third-party low-level APIs like Xserver should not exist. The existence of Xserver is proof of Linux's failure in graphics."""

X doesn't try to replace an existing API.

A audio server performs a similar function to the display server. It provides a intelligent way to manage audio I/O and multiple applications.

ALSA somewhat tried, but it wasn't enough. Instead of fixing ALSA, we have PA.

I suffered through using Alsa for years. I did many advanced things like setup custom configurations to multiplex audio inputs and all sorts of junk like that. And I can tell you from experience that Linux audio is shit without Pulseaudio.

Exactly. It shouldn't have been that way. What PA does now, ALSA should be able to do.

There is little proof needed beyond then the continued misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Pulseaudio show that there is still a large segment of the Linux user community that are not interested the least in understanding the technology of the software they are using and just run off of little more then emotionally fueled ignorance.

Then there's people who don't understand the discussion.

Every once and a while I run into something intelligent somebody says that shows that PA sucks in some way, but that's rare nowadays.

Maybe you're not intelligent enough yourself to understand the discussions.

[RealNC]

If this is the case, tell me why pro audio stuff on linux tends to not support alsa directly. Also, if extra layers were bad things like ASIO and ReWire wouldn't exist on windows/mac.

PA is not ASIO or ReWire. PA is trying to be the new ALSA. Which is wrong.

[RealNC]

Windows (starting with vista) also runs a sound server that does similar stuff to what PA does but has less features. I can't speak to how the OS X audio system works as I have basically never used it let alone looked into how it worked.

Applications don't have to deal with it. Whatever it does, it does it transparently.

Also, for those who are complainging about having one more API to target: Microsoft provides WASAPI DirectSound/DirectMusic, Media Foundation and Windows multimedia waveXxx and mixerXxx functions by default.

This is backwards compatibility stuff. ALSA for example also supports OSS. Nothing wrong with that. If Windows wouldn't support DS/DM, Windows XP games wouldn't run anymore, and if ALSA wouldn't support OSS, old Linux games/apps wouldn't run anymore either.

This is beofore adding all of the third-party stuff like ASIO, gstreamer, phonon, SDL, etc.

They serve a completely different purpose than what PulseAudio does.

I have found PA to be a huge benefit, running multiple sound devices or trying to do per-application volume control without it is painful to say the least.

All stuff that ALSA should be handling to begin with.

[ShadowBane]

X doesn't try to replace an existing API.

Qt, GTK, EFL, wxwindows and company do. Why do we need graphics toolkits getting between us and the low level apis? Xorg drawing methods should be good enough for anyone, right? We only need a low level implementation?

Maybe you're not intelligent enough yourself to understand the discussions.

And here we get to the real argument. Give this guy some applause, he can resort to ad hominem attacks to make sure everyone knows how correct his point is.

[RealNC]

Qt, GTK, EFL, wxwindows and company do. Why do we need graphics toolkits getting between us and the low level apis? Xorg drawing methods should be good enough for anyone, right? We only need a low level implementation?

Qt, GTK and EFL don't try to replace an existing API. X11 does not provide widgets.

And here we get to the real argument. Give this guy some applause, he can resort to ad hominem attacks to make sure everyone knows how correct his point is.

It's you who does that, having no clue about technical details. You don't even know what Qt and GTK are, and that ALSA is not only a kernel API but provides an extensive user-space application library that PulseAudio is trying to replace instead of enhance.