Re: ESD, aRts, ALSA, OSS, and GStreamer

["Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray" <debarshi ray gmail com>]

>> Why? How is ALSA superior to ESD, or for that matter aRts? Are ESD and aRts
>> abstraction layers built on top of ALSA?

> ESD and aRts are sound servers.  They play sounds sent to them by
> other programs to the ALSA or OSS hardware devices.  When only one
> program can write to the sound device, a sound server is needed to mix
> the sounds together. ALSA supports hardware and software mixing so
> multiple programs can play sound simultaneously. A sound server is
> also needed for playing sound over the network. In addition, the sound
> server API tend to be much simpler than ALSA (or gstreamer) which is
> good for programs which just want to beep but not so good for programs
> which want to be more advanced things.

If we get rid of ESD, and shift completely to GStreamer (using its output plugin for ALSA, SunAudio, etc.) would the following be possible:

1. Networked audio. Since there would be no sound server, does GStreamer or ALSA have the necessary features to handle it? Or does it need to be incorporated?

2. What about the API? Is the GStreamer API going to be notoceably more tougher than the ESD ones?

I might be becoming repetitive, but I really want to know about this transition from ESD to GStreamer. More so, since it seems that ESD and GStreamer's domains do not completely overlap.

Thanks for your attention,
Debarshi