Re: Polypaudio for Gnome 2.10, the next steps

[Lennart Poettering <mztabzr 0pointer de>]

On Thu, 25.11.04 00:59, Mike Hearn (mike navi cx) wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:08:28 +0100, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> > I'd like to add that ALSA's dmix plugin just forks off its own process
> > and does mixing and most work there. This is more or less the same as
> > the autospawning feature of esound or polypaudio.
> 
> Are you sure? My reading of the code is that the other process is used
> purely for synchronisation, and the actual mixing/draining is done by the
> playing processes themselves.

You're right. The mixing is done in the client. However this is no
win. The client select()s on a unix socket for being notified when to
write the audio data to the shared memory segment. i.e. the extra
context switch is always there. 

The source of that stuff is really badly documented.

Lennart

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