Date: Mon, 02 Nov 1998 14:18:38 -0800 From: grady@xcf.berkeley.edu (Steven Grady) To: multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How can we switch to a higher-level audio interface? Message-ID: <199811022217.OAA15557@hub.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 2 Nov 1998 21:03:53 %2B0100 (MET) <199811022003.VAA14984@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
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> there is one big problem with audio: unless video, you want real time > response and a userspace server cannot always help you, let alone the > jitter and losses you can have with a networked audio server. It's true you are not guaranteed a real-time response (although FreeBSD does have real-time scheduling, or at least some indications, eg. the man page for rtprio; I don't know anything about it). But a well-written server is not likely to have jitter or losses -- it should certainly be able to keep the buffer filled; and if it can't, then an application program certainly couldn't do any better. So I don't think that's an excuse. > Also, there is no equivalent of the "current window"/"input focus" for > audio: all output is mixed together. Agreed, but to me this is an interesting design problem, not an insurmountable obstacle. For instance, perhaps you need a "source manager" instead of a "window manager". In X, you can work without a window manager, but it will be painful. The source manager could allow you to select one of n source audio streams as the foreground, and have that one have the highest relative volume. If you don't have one running, everything has the same volume. This idea is off the top of my head; I'm sure people could come up with better solutions. Again, the point is that there are indeed interesting problems (some of which the people who've worked on NAS and other technologies have already thought about), but they do not mean that no good solution is possible. (To take the simplest case -- Windows is a proof by example -- at least it's possible to have multiple simultaneous sounds. I sure hope we could do better than Microsoft...) Steven "`Simpson', eh? I'll remember that name!" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-multimedia" in the body of the message
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