[MPlayer-dev-eng] [patch] prefer ALSA over OSS

[Reimar Döffinger]

Hello,
On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 06:47:33PM +0200, Attila Kinali wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:23:14 +0200
> Adrian Bunk <bunk at stusta.de> wrote:
> 
> > In Linux kernel 2.6, ALSA is the default sound system.
> > It contains an in-kernel OSS emulation, but using ALSA directly is 
> > better.
> > 
> > MPlayer supports both ALSA and OSS, and this patch changes the order to 
> > check for ALSA before checking for OSS.
> 
> I'm against it.
> OSS emulation of ALSA is a lot less error prone than
> alsa itself. Yes, you read right. Whom ever i had to
> help with sound problems (broken driver system or
> A/V sync problems) in the last two years always
> had problems with ALSA that were easily solved
> by using the OSS emulation.
> 
> Don't ask me why, i don't understand how ALSA works.

Well, that is most likely due to alsas resampling stuff, they manage to
get it wrong always constantly.
Unfortunately, since the latest changes in OSS emulation, OSS does not
longer work correctly, it claims to support all frequencies but simply
plays it back at the closest rate supported by the hardware.
Thus on my system "mplayer -srate 96000" means everything is played at
half speed.

Greetings,
Reimar Döffinger