Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 27th Sep 2008 22:14 UTC, submitted by diegocg
Lennart Poettering, main programmer of the PulseAudio project, has written a 'Guide Through The Linux Sound API Jungle': "At the Audio MC at the Linux Plumbers Conference one thing became very clear: it is very difficult for programmers to figure out which audio API to use for which purpose and which API not to use when doing audio programming on Linux. So here's my try to guide you through this jungle."
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Member since:
2005-07-06
This is what happens when politics drive technology decisions, and almost every problem I have encountered in software development has this as the root cause.
Audio is the ugly stepchild of computer media. Most audio hardware STILL hasn't moved on from MIDI to USB|Firewire, which was also the only API EVER to be removed from Java SE, and Vista ditched HW accelerated DirectAudio for a new C++ API. God knows what I'll encounter as I attempt to develop advanced audio apps for OpenSolaris.
Sound is just not treated with any respect or consistency by the majority of developers it seems. What's doubly frustrating is that audio is so VERY simple conceptually. All I want to do is route and filter digital streams and choose which analog sphincter they poop out of. Not that difficult.
I'm currently using GStreamer because like a mountain, it's there, and I'm looking into using JACK. But I have little idea of what the UNIX|Linux audio API landscape actually looks like, and it's still hard to asses despite all the articles written about it.