[lug] Multiplexing Sound Device

[Michael Hirsch]

On Mon, 2002-07-22 at 04:36, Jeffrey Siegal wrote:
> Dhruva B. Reddy wrote:
> 
> >I do not run a desktop environment (such as GNOME or KDE).  Is there a
> >sound server that works with all applications (whether or not they know
> >about sound servers)?
> >  
> >
> Try esd.  The esddsp utility allows you to run regular applications that 
> don't have direct support for it.

I'd try to avoid esd.  It is not maintained and full of bugs that cause
the sound quality to degrade a lot when mixing streams.

artsd has a better rep.  It is used by KDE, and I beleive that GNOME
hase committed to switching to it, too.  It has a better reputation,
though I've often had trouble with it in the past.

Finally, the recommendation for OSS from 4-Front is a good one.  4-Front
wrote the original Linux drivers and their commercial drivers are very
nice.  The can mix several streams and they do a great job of it.  They
do a really good job of resampling the sound to a given sample rate so
you can mix streams of different sample rate (one of the things that esd
does extremely poorly).

Finally, I'm not very familiar with ALSA, but I wouldn't be surprised to
hear that they have a similar solution.

--Michael