Re: [gnome-love] ESD, aRts, ALSA, OSS, and GStreamer

["Travis Watkins" <alleykat gmail com>]

On 4/24/06, Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray <debarshi ray gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Recently there has been a lot of talk about GStreamer replacing ESD and aRts
> as the primary media framework. Now I had been seeing this discussing from
> the sidelines from the beginning itself and find it extremely interesting.
> But the problem is that I am a bit confused regarding the relative positions
> occupied by ESD, aRts, ALSA, OSS and GStreamer with respect to each other.
>
> I do know that ESD is GNOME based just as aRts is KDE based; that ALSA
> multiplexes the /dev/dsp device allowing multiple applications to use the
> sound-card simultaneously, while OSS does not. Now if ESD and aRts are
> desktop environment specific why is ALSA not so? I mean what is the
> fundamental difference? Does not aRts and ESD also allow multiple
> applications to use the sound-card?
>
> FAQ at the GStreamer project page says : "Streamer is not a soundserver.
> GStreamer does however have plugins supporting most of the major
> soundservers available today, including ESD, aRTSd, and to some extent Jack.
> Support for MAS is also planned". If that is so, then how can it replace
> ESD? Are they not entirely different things? Would it not be better to
> replace aRts and ESD by ALSA and improve GStreamer support for ALSA,
> resulting in a single well-polished sound architecture.

ALSA is linux only. Also, ALSA does not allow multiple programs to
access /dev/dsp, you talk to it in a different way. I think the idea
is to use gstreamer for everything, then the user can decide what
backend to use. Some sound cards do not support multiple streams and
so you would still have to use esd or arts here. But if the program is
using gstreamer it doesn't have to worry about any of this, gstreamer
and the user can figure out where to send the sound.

--
Travis Watkins
http://www.realistanew.com