[Jackit-devel] alsa pcm_jack plugin (fwd)

[Kai Vehmanen]

I'll forward some posts from jackit-devel and lad to here:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 09:29:17 -0500
From: Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com>
To: Maarten de Boer <mdeboer at iua.upf.es>
Cc: jackit-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Jackit-devel] alsa pcm_jack plugin 

>I started a new alsa plugin, called pcm_jack. This plugin is

can we give this man a hand? how about 3 hands? or 4? how about we
give him an entire orchestra of hands?

from my perspective, this just about completes the audio API story for
Linux. we have:

       1) for truly cross-platform audio: PortAudio
       2) for generic Linux audio applications: ALSA
       3) for real-time "pro" audio applications: JACK

All 3 are connected together in a kind of trinity:

    PortAudio: can output via JACK or ALSA
    ALSA: can output via JACK
    JACK: output via ALSA

Personally, I would characterize it a third way:

    Hardware abstraction layer: ALSA
    Software abstraction layer: JACK
    Platform abstraction layer: PortAudio	    

Which API to pick for any given new project is still a dilemma, and I
suggest that the entire LAD (in the generic sense of that term) comes
up with some recommendations and posts them somewhere conspicuous.

The question now will be: what are KDE and GNOME going to do about
this? Do we have any lurkers who interact with or can speak for these
groups? 

--p