Re: esound and playing mp3's ?

[R Pickett <emerson hayseed net>]

On Sat, 9 Jan 1999 raster@redhat.com wrote:

> incorrect. RTFM pay attention.
> 
> esddsp app_name
> 
> ooh wow it works via esd now
> 
> esddsp x11amp
> 
> ooh it works via sed now
> 
> esddsp blahblah
> 
> humpf
> 
> donest work with everything but works with quiet a few standard audio
> apps.

Is the fact that it doesn't work with everything esd's fault, or those apps'
fault?  I'm not being snitty, here, this is an actual question I'd like
enlightenment (pun intended) on.  If this is a temporary solution that works
with all correctly-written OSS apps, that's a good thing.  Although it's still
esd imposing its rules on the rest of the universe.

> there's ALSO 
> esdctl off
> esdctl on
> where esd will respectively release its hold on /dev/dsp and the regain
> it if it can.

And again I ask, why doesn't it do this automagically, since it has this
capability?

> why? there will just be a tiny wrapper scritp to run realaudio under
> esd - it works here.
> 
> esddsp rvplayer
> 
> need i say more.

Yes.  What about third-party programs, installed via RPMs or the like, that
don't supply such a wrapper sscript?

Again, I maintain, esd must play nice, automatically, with non-esd-compliant
apps, or else people will not use it.  The burden should not be on each
application's author to provide a way to coexist with esd.

> well if apps were written well and latency was an issue they coudl
> happily upload samples to esd then tell esd to play then as needed.

And now we're back to 'you must be esd-compliant or else you face lesser
performance.'  Not OK.

> esd is not finished - give it a break boy! do you think they developed
> X11 in a year? esd is the correct principle - it is the sampel
> rpinciple by whihc X works - you dont seem to complain about this. If
> you have issues then HELP wiht development. Dont' just sit and complain.

Last I checked, non-coding individuals discussing the needs of the end-user
with developers DID constitute helping with development.  I still await input
on the other half of my mail, the part that offered solutions and suggestions
to the 'complaints' I was making.

I think you're taking my criticism of the current paradigm a little bit
personally.  My interest, both in this mail, and in the articles I'm workings
on, is to try to leverage OpenSource platforms into the professional musics
production industry, a market they are conspicuously missing out on, currently.
If my comments on esd are not welcome feedback, I can write it off completely,
and only work with applications that speak directly to OSS or ALSA.

I doubt you remember this, Raster, but you and I discussed the idea of a sound
daemon for E on #e, months before esd became a reality.  I was interested at
the time, and continue to be interested, in helping produce an OpenSource
sound system with the power and flexibility of some of the high-end audio
engines currently in the professional audio industry, like Digidesign or Sonic
Solutions' offerings.  At the time, your reply, parahrased, was that you were
a graphic artist and an X hacker, and sound wasn't your area of expertise.

And when a sound daemon did appear for E, it has ended up being much more
analogous to Windows' old MMSYSTEM than to DAE.  This is great for playing
kewl sounds in response to program events, and even for things like streaming
audio and other consumer-level multimedia tasks.  But for film and audio work,
where audio has to be synchronized at the sample level, this is not
acceptable.

And so, once again, I'm offering my 5+ years' expertise as a tester for Opcode
Systems and Digidesign to provide feedback and guidance to help OpenSource
platforms move toward being usable, and eventually preferred, in the
professional audio production market.  I'm glad to speak to any developer
who's interested in working toward this goal.  I would think that the Gnome
project would have an interest in this, especially for nominally-professional
tools like Audiotechque that are in development.

But if this is not a direction the authors of esd are interested in taking it,
there are more polite ways of telling me.

I'm done, now, no more long rants like this in public, unless the rest of the
Gnome group is actually more interested in this topic than it would seem.
Private replies welcome.

-- 
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R Pickett                Look around you. This is what the world
emerson@hayseed.net      looks like at the end of the millenium.
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