[ltp] T40 and ALSA, but no multi channel mixing

[Steve Harris]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 02:36:18PM -0400, Eben King wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, Roman Joost wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 09:22:52AM -0400, Alex Deucher wrote:
> > > 
> > > I'm not really an expert when it comes to sound, but it's my
> > > understanding that to mix multiple streams you either need a sound
> > > daemon like esd or a sound chip that supports multiple streams in
> > > hardware like the SB live! or audigy cards.
> > Sure, but what the deamons already do, is ALSA also capable off. Thats
> > why I want to use ALSA instead of the deamons.
> 
> The object is not merely in reducing the number of programs used, but in
> reducing the time between sound-requested and sound-produced.  ALSA has
> lower latency than any daemon because ALSA is kernel-space and the daemons
> are user-space, yes?

Not neccesarily, jackd gives the same latency as an application that uses
ALSA directly, but its a bit extreme for mp3 playback and suchlike.

The ALSA native channel mixing stuff is called DMIX, theres some
information about it on the ALSA wiki:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin

- Steve