Re: Some writing about sound

[raster redhat com]

On  8 May, Caolan McNamara shouted:
->  
->  On 08-May-98 Jurgen Botz wrote:
->  >Tom Tromey wrote:
->  
->  < chomp> 
->  
->  >In short, network transparent sound service would be nice for 
->  >completeness sake, but I think we can solve 99% of the needs without
->  >it... so if it makes things a lot harder, I don't think it's worth it.
->  
->  1) networked audio is rather a useful item to have, e.g i run a pig
->  of an x app that i use for audio work, i would much rather run it
->  on a remote machine thats far more powerful than mine with a bucket
->  load more memory, but i cant as it opens /dev/audio so i must run it 
->  on mine. For all the same reasons that X network ability is good so
->  too is networked audio. I can understand that when you run linux on a 
->  standalone machine that the networked ability of X and nas appear trivial,
->  but when you work in a large organisation/university where the network is
->  paramount, the inability to play sound from a remote machine is incredibly
->  irritating, i can interoperate apps from all machines, run solaris apps that
->  arent available for linux onto my box etc etc, but when i go to play a quick
->  do-de-doo, to show that mail has arrived the whole model falls apart.
->  
->  2) sound apps should be able to run together, one solution is to have a sound
->  server that the apps communicate with, this mechanism is really needed for
->  apps on the same machine to share the sound device, why not use sockets for the
->  client-server communication and get network transparent while you are at it ?

already done. see esd (it mixes streams and/or samples simultaneously -
so does nas) so u dont have a locked device ever.

->  not having a networked audio protocol that apps can use would be a pain. 
->  its not just a matter of completeness, but audio *is* becoming more important
->  with ui designers (well i bloody hope so or my masters work is doomed already),
->  theres work underway to audio-enhance graphical components, so its not at all
->  far-fetched to imagine that gtk would benefit from audio enhancement,
->  ( trivial java 1.1.2 demo at
->  http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/sound/button.html )
->  what would be worse than using such a system, then running your beautiful
->  audio enhanced GNOME desktop from a remote machine and getting silence.
->  id very strongly argue that not having a networkable sound system would detract
->  greatly from GNOME, the benefits involved in networking audio outweigh the
->  additional difficuly in doing it.
->  
->  whew, anyhow got that off my chest.
->  
->  C
->   
->  Real Life: Caolan McNamara           *  Doing: MSc in HCI
->  Work: Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie          *  Phone: +353-61-202699
->  URL: http://skynet.csn.ul.ie/~caolan *  Sig: an oblique strategy
->  Imagine a caterpillar moving
->  
->  

-- 
--------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------------
raster@rasterman.com       /\___ /\ ___/||\___ ____/|/\___  raster@redhat.com
Carsten Haitzler           | _ //__\\ __||_ __\\ ___|| _ /  Red Hat Advanced
218/21 Conner Drive        || // __ \\_ \ | |   \ _/_|| /   Development Labs
Chapel Hill NC 27514 USA   ||\\\/  \//__/ |_|   /___/||\\   919 547 0012 ext 282
+1 (919) 929 9443, 801 4392   For pure Enlightenmenthttp://www.rasterman.com/