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

[Rich Felker]

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 07:26:48PM +0400, Vladimir Mosgalin wrote:
> > Uhg, disgusting. Only viable IM client is bitlbee.
> 
> gajim looks nicer.

Then apparently you didn't look because bitlbee doesn't have a "look".

> > This statement is blatently false. Audio processing is trivial. You
> > deliver samples to a device, in a format supported by the device, in
> > sequence and measure the current playback position in the buffer.
> > Nothing else is needed.
> 
> And each and every application has to support each and every fancy
> soundcard which has some obscure sample format?

It already has to!!! Via the alsa library. How is it any different if
the application is allowed to choose which format-conversion library
it prefers, or do its own format conversion?? Then it can use a
portable cross-platform library that doesn't know anything about the
underlying sound system, instead of a nasty Linux-specific library
like ALSA.

> In your dreams. This
> will never work. No one would use oss then, everybody would use SDL or
> something else which does proper conversion disregarding the app. And
> it's return of alsalib.

Except that it's not forced on you.

> I have 4 (four) audio devices on my computer. Well, actually 5.

Then you are automatically under the category of special-interest.
Anyone who's not under special-interest has exactly one device.

> It's not really mplayer's bug, take even most basic oss applications
> like mpg321, soxplay or anything else - nothing works with oss
> interface. In fact, I don't even see oss interface for usb card, I have
> /dev/dsp and /dev/dsp1 devices for 1) and 2). I'll finaly remove audigy
> card on the next boot and will see if it appears at all.

This is because ALSA's "OSS emulation" is emulating an outdated
version of the OSS API without 24bit sample mode.

Rich