[MPlayer-dev-eng] audio_out.c question

[Mitch Golden]

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006, RC wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:26:12 -0500 (EST)
> Mitch Golden <mgolden at mitchgolden.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not an unsophisticated user
>
> Then why are you top-posting?

Again, peace.

I was replying to a whole series of e-mails that addressed my original 
question and not specifically to the message I included below.  I was 
including it merely to reference a specific point that we had made, and I 
considered it more in the nature of an attachment than a reply.

As you many have noted before, in general I interleave my replys.

>> I am still not getting what the problem is with preferring alsa  in
>> the case of an audio-only stream.
>
> Possibly because using one ao method in one case, and a different ao
> method in another case, would be absolutely schitzoprehnic, and cause
> all types of confusion and other issues.

What confusion/issues do you think would arise?  If mplayer has to reopen 
the sound device whenever it starts playing anyway, why can't it pick the 
device that plays best with the other apps, without causing any synch 
issues.  As it stands currently, whether mplayer gets OSS or alsa depends 
on whether another application is already holding open /dev/dsp.  When I 
first started using mplayer, I sometimes got a popup and sometimes not. 
This seemed more a source of confusion (and whining from the user base, 
I'm told) than having it quietly pick the most suitable sound driver.

> Possibly because you didn't include a patch.

I am new to this list, and wanted to ask people's opinion before I went 
off half-cocked and did something useless.  Based on this discussion, I 
have a much better idea of what people want, and so my patch will address 
the popup, the crash on unpause, and the cryptic messaging.  I will look 
into what's involved in the changes I'm suggesting.

>> *) A question: Windows can have multiple applications on these self
>> same  single-voice soundcards.  How does it do it without something
>> like alsa  mixing the streams?
>
> It does use something "like alsa" to mix the streams transparently.
> It only does so on Windows 2000/XP, IIRC, and the rest have the
> single-stream limit (with wave-out, not dsound).

I guess this is a question for Rich - is the concern one of principle that 
you feel that no OS should mix the sound in software, or is it a concern 
that alsa in particular has bugs?  Given that windows now allows multiple 
apps to play sounds concurrently, the same will be expected of Linux.

   - Mitch