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Linux Audio Development
JulesVD writes "There is an article from Linux Journal about the latest plans for Linux audio functionality from the first developer's conference in Germany. Developers from more than a dozen countries attended this successful conference, representing organizations such as SuSE, Linux Audio Systems, Stanford University, IRCAM and Centro Tempo Reale. Topic discussions included in-depth presentations of the rapidly evolving Linux sound system, a look at the details of programming for professional audio standards and a survey of recent applications and audio-centric Linux distributions." Mmm...interesting reading (blantant plug for cool program), but I think the most important question is will it make Scrubby happy?
ALSA is actually quite nice. It works on more cards than OSS, allows duplex on some cards and is still backwards compatible with the OSS API. However I still feel that audio support on Linux could be improved. For example in my latop Intel soundcard which seems to only play at 44 Khz if using xmms. Now I know this is a software problem but it would be nice if it worked out the box.
Not a major issue but annoying
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Something like Logic or Cubase on Linux would absolutely kick ass. My powerbook beats the hell out of windows for music apps, but an open-sourced suite would be worth it to switch. You have no idea how often I wind up thinking, geez, if only logic had an extra slider here to control this or that or the other...
Isn't the largest issue with any support on Linux still the fact that very few companies are willing to put in the time to create Linux drivers let alone have have the decency to release the information on the chipsets to the public to allow 3rd party drivers to be created?
Maybe what should be looked into is the creation of a vested interest just to deal with sound card companies and try and negotiate accessability to chipset information to create drivers for their cards for other OSes than they're willing to develop for in-house.
I get around this problem by buying only well supported hardware.
But what's really annoying is when features aren't supported on Linux for non-technical reasons. For example, Matrox has written Linux drivers for their graphics cards, but the Linux drivers don't support TV-out. Why?
It's apparently because Linux doesn't have Macrovision support, and I guess Matrox doesn't want to be sued by the MPAA for releasing drivers that "enable piracy". So Linux users can't have a feature that has many legitimate uses, just because someone might tape a DVD onto a VHS tape with it.
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Yet there is a long way to have an API with DirectSound/DirectSound3D/DirectMusic/DLS features in Linux. (I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?) Sound is one of the major obstacles for the games to come to Linux....
It's too bad that the desktop audio scene is such a shambles by comparison - in 2003 there is still no standard way of mixing and resampling (sound servers). What I expect will happen at this point is simply that once 2.6 is rolled out, distros will simply start shipping with the ALSA dmix plugin which mixes at the hardware level by writing into a sound cards DMA buffer (iirc), making most desktop uses of sound servers obsolete (though they can still be useful for network transparent audio and jack style synchro).
Oh, and GStreamer kicks ass :) It's messy right now, but I think Linux multimedia could become really great.
Linux needs VST, and most importantly, ASIO support before it can even begin to be remotely considered for professional use.