[pulseaudio-discuss] GSoC: Call for project ideas

[Len Ovens]

On Sat, March 23, 2013 5:39 pm, Toby St Clere Smithe wrote:

> When I did my research into codec choice around 9 months ago, I looked
> into FLAC, along with lossless codecs like Vorbis. Off the top of my
> head, I can't remember the details exactly, but my criteria were quite
> straightforward: firstly, I wanted something to reduce my network
> bandwidth requirements, since my 802.11g equiment wasn't hacking it[0];
> secondly, I wanted something with low latency; thirdly, I wanted
> something flexible, so that I could support different types of stream
> and adjust intelligently but imperceptibly for different network
> conditions; and lastly, I wanted something with low CPU and memory
> requirements.

Wireless is a different kettle of fish than wired network. Bandwidth is
maximum... getting 50M on wireless is like having 50M on a wired lan
shared with 50 other people... all surfing. Not quite so bad as if they
were streaming, but the instantaneous throughput is all over the place.
They reply on lots of resends to get everything there at all. In the
language of audio, this reads like drop outs. Opus is probably the only
codec that will at least sound like music. On the opus website they have
an audio clip with 20% dropouts, it seems to muddle through ok, but not
exactly high fidelity :)

My 100M wired line when doing nothing else seems to transfer a file at
about 40M max. On that I can run 20 bidirectional 16bit/48k pcm with sub
20ms latency (netjack), I haven't played with networking pulse to compare
though. (I wouldn't expect much difference) Wireless I can't set much up.

-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net