[MPlayer-dev-eng] audio_out.c question

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 09:10:43AM -0500, Mitch Golden wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Mar 2006, Ivan Kalvachev wrote:
> 
> >2006/3/22, Mitch Golden <mgolden at mitchgolden.com>:
> >>I am new to this list but I have a question about the code in
> >>libao2/audio_out.c.  I am running on Linux Fedora Core 4, using KDE.
> >[...]
> >>My suggested ordering has artsd first, then alsa, then oss.  Of course
> >>this is true on my Linux system, and I don't know what should be done with
> >>some of the others.
> >>
> >>Forgive me if this is something that's been discussed before.  If people
> >>agree with me, I can make a patch.
> >
> >We may forgive your sins if you read the whole manual three times and
> >repeat "RTFM" 20 times.
> >;)
> >
> >Try to find out what `mplayer -ao arts,esd,oss,alsa,` does.(it's the
> >same as putting "ao=arts,esd,oss,alsa,"
> 
> Sorry I wasn't clear.  I saw the code for the opening of the command line 
> driver in audio_out.c, but was wondering why the default order of opening 
> was to use "native" first then "wrapper".

Because the native drivers work correctly and the wrappers are buggy
crap that lead to a/v desync and all sorts of nasty problems. However
on some broken systems the wrappers like arts/esd take control of the
sound device and won't let anything else use it, and in this case we
either have to use arts/esd or put up with users whining incessantly
because they can't figure out they need to killall -9 arts/esd or
better yet rm them..

> I am using mplayer for the playing of audio files (since FC4 comes with 
> MP3 configured to play under noatun, which cannot in fact open mp3 files - 
> at least as it's supplied by default).  In this case, synchronization is 
> not an issue.  Might it not be best to change the default behavior if what 
> is being played is an audio only file to use the wrapped drivers first?

You can override the order for your system if you need to in the
config file. The default will not be changed since it's always
preferable to use the native drivers if they work.

Rich