Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 23:53:07 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Status and future of sound drivers ? Message-ID: <3931.858239587@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 12 Mar 1997 15:37:10 %2B0100." <199703121437.PAA03647@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
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> I notice that the sound driver sources on 2.1.7 are mostly the same > as 2.1R, and sound support is, IMHO, one of the worst parts of > FreeBSD. The sound drivers in FreeBSD are abandoned. That's the basic truth. Yes, many of us were also waiting in hopes that OSS Lite (the freely redistributable, source available version of OSS) would come along soon and save us from our sound code, but Hannu recently announced that this wouldn't happen until sometime in mid-'98, so that's obviously out as a short-to-medium term solution. Frankly, if someone wanted to take over FreeBSD audio and take it in new and interesting (or even simply functional :) directions then I certainly wouldn't argue. Perhaps OSS isn't in our future at all - I could certainly see something evolving in FreeBSD's audio support which turned out to be simply too nice to switch away from. :-) > First of all, the sound driver currently includes the "audio" and the > "music" stuff. I don't know how good is this. "audio" staff is mostly > used for conferencing-type of applications, "music" (meant as FM > synthesis, OPL, midi...) is probably more oriented to games and other The audio is fairly reasonable (if you're talking about access to the DSP) and the music support generally sucks. :) > Our sound driver is heavily outdated, especially on the > "audio" section: most "modern" sound boards nowadays have full duplex > support via WSS and AD1848/CD4231 compatible codecs, are configured > via PnP, and such hardware costs very little (the equivalent of US$ 25 That is also true. > I have the feeling that the "music" part is in better shape, but I > cannot tell for sure since I have no interest in the latter. Well it's not, so whomever takes over audio, I'd hope they'd also pay some attention to the music support. :-) > Considering the above, I am totally in favour of trying to support > sound devices autonomously, by starting from the current sources and > trying to bring them in line with current FreeBSD drivers and new > boards. Inclusion of support for a common interface will be easily > added (assuming that we don't get it right in the first place) > since we have full control on the sources. OK. Well, since the audio code is, as I said before, abandoned at this time then I guess that leaves... You? Can Luigi Rizzo fill Amancio Hasty's shoes? ;-) Jordan
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