Linux Audio : Welcome to the spaghetti system

Saturday, April 18. 2009

Linux Audio : Welcome to the spaghetti system

Diagram of Linux Audio

Ever wondered why PulseAudio sucks so bad?

Sick of the multiple Audio stacks in Linux? (OSS/ALSA/PulseAudio).
Ever wanted to make sense of items like JACK,ESD,aRts and NAS or just confused with either GStreamer or xine?

Here is a clever overview of the sound systems that is Linux. (click the image for a larger view)/

Linux audio like it or not is a mess. Multiple layers providing the same functionality. It's a house of cards that often falls down.
Things have been hidden well in OSS/ALSA and it's not until demanding audio like HD codecs have started to make their way across that some of these issues are starting to be uncovered (the infamous 'popping' sounds).

PulseAudio has been poking and pushing ALSA in recent times, and as a result unearthed a number of issues.

I'm hopefully eventually we'll get to a single, simple but powerful audio stack. I'm not holding my breath though.

Posted by Matt in Apps, Coding, Hardware, Linux, Opinion at 03:13 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: alsa, apps, coding, hardware, linux, music, open source, opinion, oss, pulseaudio, software, sound, x11

Related entries by tags:

1608 hits

< Seen your stimulus package? | "We're Linux" Video Contest >

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Firstly, the image you have is my modification of Mike M's original image. Please cite it. (I created the modification specifically for my Ohio LinuxFest 2008 talk on audio, and it is redistributable in any fashion as long as both Mike M and myself are mentioned.)

Secondly, as much as some people may abhor it, PulseAudio is not going away. It is actively developed, and future versions will have proper handoff with JACK.

Thirdly, you really need to mention Lennart's evolving guide to writing good Linux audio apps.

#1 Daniel T Chen (Homepage) on 2009-04-21 14:30 (Reply)

Hey Daniel,

Yes I read your blog regularly and that's where I sourced the image.

As the image had original source information on it....I thought that was it.

I'm happy to cite your reference: http://www.ohiolinux.org/files/downloads/2008/slides/unbreaking-audio.pdf

I have no opinion for or against PulseAudio. However as most users -- I think audio should 'just work'. It does in other competing Operating Systems.

#1.1 Matt (Homepage) on 2009-04-21 17:04 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	You can use [geshi lang=lang_name [,ln={y\|n}]][/geshi] tags to embed source code snippets. BBCode format allowed Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry