[CentOS] Linux Sound Architecture (Updated)

[Ross S. W. Walker]

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 11:59 -0400, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
> > I have been working a while trying to get a big picture of how Linux
> > handles sound processing and after much work I have put together this
> > little representation of what I have learned.
> > 
> > Please send me any additional comments or components that I may have
> > missed.
> 
> Some corrections (PulseAudio contains an ALSA module that can redirect
> audio back into PA):

ALSA provides an ALSA driver in it's plugins to send audio to a
PulseAudio server, so that part is pure ALSA. I mean sure it
uses PulseAudio's protocol to send over the network, but as far
as ALSA is concerned it's just another ALSA kernel driver for
communicating with sound hardare. The PulseAudio server by
itself is of course a pure sound server.

Having said that, I don't believe that the ALSA driver for
PulseAudio counts as yet another interface.

AOSS is merely a shim for the builtin OSS Compatibility API to
force older OSS apps to use the API properly, because of that I
count AOSS as part of the OSS Compatibility API.

Also sound servers can and do use third party API products such
as GStreamer. Often GStreamer provides those plugins on behalf
of the sound server (cause no one else wants to), but the
plugin is still part of the sound server and as far as the sound
server is concerned it is just sending audio directly to the
hardware API. GStreamer/Phonon also have plugins for
communicating with sound servers as well as HW APIs such as
ALSA or OSS. When diagramming these third party APIs things
can ugly pretty darn fast.

Thanks for the additional examples, but I still stand by my
original diagram. Maybe someone can take each part of the
diagram, zoom in on it and show which apps/apis/modules from
which project interface between each other and in which
direction.


> >           Linux Sound Architecture
> > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> > X         Linux Sound Applications        X
> > X                                         X
> > X                    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> > X                    X    Sound Servers   X
> > X                    X  ESD/aRts/NAS/JACK X
> > X                    X                    X
> > X          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX          X
> > X          X  Third-Party APIs X          X
> > X          X GStreamer/Phonon/ X          X
> > X          X    xine-lib       X          X
> > X          X                   X          X
> > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> > X                    X   OSS Compat API   X
> > X      ALSA API      XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> > X                                         X
> > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> > X       Linux Kernel (ALSA driver)        X
> > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> > X             Sound Hardware              X
> > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
> 
> Yes, audio on Linux is a mess.

This I do agree with though!

-Ross

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