[gst-devel] Linux audio is a mess? [was: JACK and GStreamer, from the horse's mouth]

[Paul Davis]

On Thu, 2006-11-30 at 18:53 +0200, Zeeshan Ali wrote:
> Hi again!
> 
> > >   Aren't most of these tasks too high-level for a low-level thing
> > > like ALSA? MAS tried to address all these issues and they ended-up
> > > re-inventing the wheel (gstreamer) and now nobody seem to even
> > > remember if that project ever existed.
> >
> > Sure they are too high-level. That's why I am working on PulseAudio
> > which implements all this. And that's why I am arguing that ALSA is
> > not "the solution" like Ronald suggested.
> 
>    You missed my point: All we need is a way to allow all the
> applications to access the same audio device at the same time, whether
> it's alsa's dmix or a sound server that does the task. 

why do so many people assume that the goal of running an audio app is to
send audio data to the audio hardware? one of the top level goals of 
any audio API should be to facilitate routing audio between applications
so that users are free to do what they want, not what a developer
thought seemed reasonable. shared access to the audio device tends to
fall out from doing this, but the two things are orthogonal at some
level.