[pulseaudio-discuss] alsa pulse bugs

[Sjoerd Simons]

On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 12:22:10PM +0200, tom at dbservice.com wrote:
> Quoting Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie>:
> > Actually just having a very quick glance at the Alsa API docs, it
> > doesn't mention that this value should be 0 if there are no samples to play:
> >
> > http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/group___p_c_m.html#ga0d9e14a4be65209eb549e48a9f07302
> >
> > Closest it says is: "It's positive and less than buffer size in normal
> > situation".
> >
> > So perhaps this is an invalid assumption at the wine side?
> 
> However this part:
> 
> Delay is distance between current application frame position and sound  
> frame position.

I'm not an alsa expert. But what application normally want to know from this
call is: If i write some bits of audio *now* how long will it take before it's
played. Which is used for audio/video synchronisation. If you change the pulse
plugin to not report network latency, then audio/video synchronisation will
break.


> suggests that it indeed can be zero. Or why would a soundcard have a  
> gap between the read and write positions if it has played everything?

That it *can* be zero, doesn't mean it *has* to become zero though. The root of
this issue is that you (and the alsa API mostly is too) are assuming to be
talking to a soundcard, but pulseaudio isn't a soundcard. So there are some
subtle differences...

> If Wine uses a wrong assumption, then please clarify the function description.
> 
> > Is there perhaps a more appropriate API call they can use to do whatever
> > test they are doing?
> 
> What Wine needs to know, is whether a particular sample has already  
> been played or not. It does 'bytes_written - delay_in_bytes' to find  
> out how much of the written data the soundcard has already played. If  
> there is a better test for it, please explain.

Don't know, sorry

  Sjoerd
-- 
Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach,
Or what's a heaven for ?
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