[pulseaudio-discuss] Windows7 audio architecture

[pl bossart]

>> The video is available at:
>> http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Elliot-H-Omiya-Larry-Osterman-and-Frank-Yerrace-Inside-Windows-7-Audio-Stack/
>> for download in various formats. Here is a direct download URL:
>> http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/ch9/0/2/8/9/7/4/InsideWin7Audio_ch9.wmv
>
> Thanks for the link. This is really quite interesting.
>
> It's fun that they now are playing catch up with us. Allowing streams
> to move between devices during playback and automatic per-role routing
> seem to be the big new features in Windows7 audio. And we had that for
> a longer time now already ;-)

This is interesting indeed. The main points I captured were:
- Win7 doesn't seem to rely on timer-based scheduling, my
understanding is that they rely on hardware events to avoid the issues
with audio/wall clock drifts. At the same time, they don't seem to be
shooting for reduction in wake-ups by using large buffers when latency
is not an issue. The events are 15ms apart at most, and the benefits
of timers are not clear in that case.
- 'capture monitors' seem to be the equivalent of the loopback module
I wrote (shameless bit of self-promotion for once...). The MSFT
developer described the same issues I had with internal mics with
feedback loops/larsen. The 'capture monitors are configured with a
'listen-to' tab in the UI.
- Win7 implements some sort of audio policy and redirect streams based
on 'heuristics'. While this is common on embedded devices, this is not
very common on laptops/desktops. We really need to have a unique
policy-related API for apps to provide the relevant support for
pausing/resuming.
- Apps can listen to rerouting events
- Apps can listen to pause/resume events and make decisions on their
own, without entirely relying on the audio policy
- Apps can prevent automatic volume modifications or docking if they
don't fell this is relevant for their content (e.g games)