Re: System Sounds Through GStreamer

[Nathaniel McCallum <npmccallum gentoo org>]

On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 16:22 +0200, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> There are two latency-related things esd has problems with.  One is
> "time between asking to play something and actually playing
> something".  The second is "an application using esd doesn't know how
> big this latency is"
> 
> The first is important for ding sounds and accessibility (think
> text-to-speech of selected widgets).  The second is important for
> synchronizing multiple audio programs/channels, or audio with video.

The first is also important for "synchronizing multiple audio
programs/channels" when recording (particularly live instrument
recordings).  For instance, you can sync incoming sound to already
recorded sounds by introducing a dely that is the same as the play
latency (your second item in the first paragraph).  However, this makes
it very difficult for a live performer to play if what he/she is hearing
back is delayed from what he/she is doing.

In short, "knowing the latency time" can be helpful in some cases (when
dealing with non-live sound sources), but it no substitution for
actually lowering the latency.

Nathaniel