Re: Sound events and GnomeMeeting

[Mike Hearn <mike theoretic com>]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:54:06 -0500, Sir Sean Middleditch scribed thus:
> Except that ALSA is Linux only, local host only, etc.  ALSA only solves
> one problem that esd/arts try to solve (multiple apps using the same
> sound device), and doesn't help at all with the other problems
> (portability, network transparency).

I disagree. I think sound multiplexing and network transparency are not
the problem of the desktop projects, I think that these are features that
reside below the desktop layer.

ALSA can do mixing without a sound server (or can in theory), which is the
reason 99.99% of people ran sound servers in the first place. If you want
to abstract the audio layer of the underlying kernel/OS then GStreamer is
the place for that. If you want network transparent audio, ditto -
GStreamer has elements that can send audio via UDP and network sockets,
it'd not be hard to give that the traditional functionality of a sound
server.

Sound servers have been tried, they really did not work well, and it's
time to move on. For operating systems where the audio infrastructure
doesn't support software mixing, well, this is a problem on their end that
they need to sort out. There's no reason GNOME should try and paper over
flaws of the underlying system anymore. I'd vote for junking esd and just
letting GStreamer take care of it all.

thanks -mike