http://www.osnews.com/story/17499/Open_Sound_System_v4_0_announced Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:38:03 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?221949 http://osnews.com/thread?221949 In linux hasn't OSS been replaced by ALSA?

IS there a reason why people would want to move back to OSS? or does this new release just help people who need to stick with OSS? Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ssam) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221953 http://osnews.com/thread?221953 One of the benefits of commercial Open Sound System versus the in-kernel ALSA is that, like NVidia's and ATi's proprietary video card drivers, Open Sound System contains binary-only drivers for a lot of new sound hardware, such as Creative's "new" X-Fi cards. Also, Open Sound System's software-mixing supposedly works much better than dmix for those with older cards. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (codergeek42) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221956 http://osnews.com/thread?221956 OSS is for "Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Open Server6 and UnixWare7", ALSA is for Linux only. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ford Prefect) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221959 http://osnews.com/thread?221959 thanks Ford Prefect and codergeek42

that makes things a bit clearer. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ssam) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221963 http://osnews.com/thread?221963 If OSS contains binary-only drivers, then it doesn't sound so "open" to me. But, hey, why start this whole binary vs. open source argument again?

I really don't get the point of having OSS be available for "Solaris, UnixWare7, and OpenServer6" as I doubt many people use these OSes on their desktops (and not many servers even have/use sound cards to begin with). If you're a *nix geek that uses a *nix on his desktop, it's probably Linux, so there's little reason to move from the default (and much better supported) ALSA. An argument might be made that it would be nice to have a standard API for sound between the BSD flavors and Linux, but I don't think we'll ever see it (not to say that I'd be opposed to such an effort).

I remember back in my RedHat days (before Fedora came to be, and RedHat had a desktop distro called "RedHat Linux"), OSS was used, and things were bad...then, ALSA came; and things were good Edited 2007-03-16 18:11 Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jasutton) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221965 http://osnews.com/thread?221965 "An argument might be made that it would be nice to have a standard API for sound between the BSD flavors and Linux, but I don't think we'll ever see it (not to say that I'd be opposed to such an effort)."

Theoretically, an application can use GStreamer, then the Gstreamer could automagically use the right output plugin (see: autosink or gconfaudiosink, et al.).

Then again, this is much higher level and doesn't work as nicely when you want to do lower-level sound hardware manipulation though... Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (codergeek42) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221966 http://osnews.com/thread?221966 In linux hasn't OSS been replaced by ALSA?

Additional info from the article (so THAT'S what hyperlinks are for...):

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) Library emulation support so that popular ALSA apps (the ones that use the ALSA library interface) can run on Open Sound System. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fretinator) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221996 http://osnews.com/thread?221996 ALSA does implement OSS emulation (and they aren't removing it). So you can use OSS in linux too. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegocg) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?221997 http://osnews.com/thread?221997 "I remember back in my RedHat days (before Fedora came to be, and RedHat had a desktop distro called "RedHat Linux"), OSS was used, and things were bad...then, ALSA came; and things were good "

May I ask which problems these were? I'm using FreeBSD for more than 5 years now at home at a regular basis, so it seems that I'm using OSS, and I didn't have any problems related to sound (playback and recording). Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222000 http://osnews.com/thread?222000 >>If OSS contains binary-only drivers, then it doesn't sound so "open" to me. But, hey, why start this whole binary vs. open source argument again? Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dubhthach) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222011 http://osnews.com/thread?222011 So, at least there is a way to get X-Fi to produce a sound on Linux. Although noone but gamers buy this card, and they aren't really using Linux, it is still a bad situation and doesn't help effort to grab a piece of desktop share. Maybe a new NDA scheme devised by Linux kernel hackers could be useful here.

And while their new soft mixing could be good, there is a good solution (which has also a good sw mixing) that I believe will become a main audio API: PulseAudio. (alsalib can use it as a backend btw.). Of course, it could be ported to work on new OSS, if it already doesn't. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siki_miki) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222015 http://osnews.com/thread?222015 Xfi is released? Where?
http://opensource.creative.com/ says it isn't. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (IronWolve) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222020 http://osnews.com/thread?222020 No, it's not currently supported with ALSA at all (as far as I am aware, the snd-emu10k1/emu10k2 don't work with it). The commercial Open Sound System does contain proprietary (binary-only) drivers for the X-Fi though. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (codergeek42) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222021 http://osnews.com/thread?222021 The commercial OSS drivers do not contain support for the XFi yet. This is something that is being worked on. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (4front) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222050 http://osnews.com/thread?222050 Or, more accurately, you can use OSS drivers via the usual ALSA interfaces. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222066 http://osnews.com/thread?222066 IS there a reason why people would want to move back to OSS?

Yes, better sound quality in some cases. Better performance in some cases as well. Support, etc.

The fact that it also works on more than just Linux (unlike ALSA) is also a plus.

Some of us aren't moving back to OSS, we never left

I personally will never use ALSA directly, it's a Linux only sound API and is not portable. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222067 http://osnews.com/thread?222067 If OSS contains binary-only drivers, then it doesn't sound so "open" to me. But, hey, why start this whole binary vs. open source argument again?

There was a time when open was also commonly associated with *open* standards, and not just source code. In this case, OSS is open by standard, not by source. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222068 http://osnews.com/thread?222068 I really don't get the point of having OSS be available for "Solaris, UnixWare7, and OpenServer6" as I doubt many people use these OSes on their desktops (and not many servers even have/use sound cards to begin with). If you're a *nix geek that uses a *nix on his desktop, it's probably Linux, so there's little reason to move from the default (and much better supported) ALSA. An argument might be made that it would be nice to have a standard API for sound between the BSD flavors and Linux, but I don't think we'll ever see it (not to say that I'd be opposed to such an effort).


Bzzzt.

There actually quite a few people who have workstations, etc. that use real UNIX on their desktop (not UNIX-like systems such as Linux, etc.).

Or, they use sound cards for which no public specifications are available and only OSS supports them. Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222087 http://osnews.com/thread?222087 Odd. My friend, Alex, is using the OSS drivers for his X-Fi setup, or so he says.

Oh well; thanks for the clarification. Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (codergeek42) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222123 http://osnews.com/thread?222123 The open-source Linux implementation of the Open Sound System APIs on Linux 1.x and 2.0-2.4 were horrible. Note: the Linux implementation was horrible, not the API itself.

All the other OSes that use the OSS APIs have had excellent sound (including in-kernel mixing of virtual channels) capabilities. Don't knock the API because a single group of programmers couldn't hack together a decent implementation.

ALSA is a Linux-only implementation. Why should the rest of the world be forced to move toward that, when there is already something better? There's more than just Linux in the OS world.

Personally, I've never understood the Linux mentality of "let's re-write it again" and "oh, we can (hopefully) do that better", creating Linux-specific implementations, when there are already cross-platform APIs that do the same.

Improve the implementation, improve the design, get over the NIH syndrome. Sat, 17 Mar 2007 02:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (phoenix) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222144 http://osnews.com/thread?222144 But if its software mixing capabilities really does have better quality and since it supports mixing of mmap audio, I might be really tempted to try it out. Sat, 17 Mar 2007 04:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Best) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222145 http://osnews.com/thread?222145 But if its software mixing capabilities really does have better quality and since it supports mixing of mmap audio, I might be really tempted to try it out.

You can mix 5.1 surround with stereo and at the same time do full duplex voip and run mmap games.

Here's what we tried in the labs with a ICH 4 device
- ogle playing DVD with dolby surround 5.1
- xmms playing stereo mp3
- ekigaa VOIP
- DoomIII (mmap)


Everything ran without any hiccups and audio was crystal clear. No asoundrc files to mess with, No other tricks - just run the apps as if you had complete access to the hardware.Edited 2007-03-17 04:40 Sat, 17 Mar 2007 04:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (4front) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222148 http://osnews.com/thread?222148 Sounds great, but you might want to improve the set up on Slackware systems, it looks like I'm still going to have to do some manual editing of config files. Sat, 17 Mar 2007 04:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Best) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222149 http://osnews.com/thread?222149 Sounds great, but you might want to improve the set up on Slackware systems, it looks like I'm still going to have to do some manual editing of config files.

We have the tarball installation that should work fine as long as you have the kernel sources setup. THe only thing that may not work may be the automatic startup. But please file bug reports (www.opensound.com/support.cgi) Sat, 17 Mar 2007 05:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (4front) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222173 http://osnews.com/thread?222173 ALSA/OSS is just API. It's the driver quality that matters.

My VIA8237 chip on mb A7V880 produces high-frequency noise with ALSA, but not with oss' driver. That's enough reason for switching. Besides, the oss v4 also supports ALSA API via kernel-level emulation and low-latency sound mixing like jackd (may not be as good, but less problemic than dmix) Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aquila_deus) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222174 http://osnews.com/thread?222174 So now you can use ALSA on OSS on ALSA on OSS on ALSA...

Now what's with those bin drivers ? I thought the name was "*Open* Sound System"
Was wondering about porting it to BeOS to bring in some more drivers, but it seems it's pointless. Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmu_man) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?222225 http://osnews.com/thread?222225 Open since years to different operating systems. Not open as in opensource or open like "free", hey stop I do mean free not "free as in freedom" and so on. Do you get it? Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Oliver) Comments