[MPlayer-dev-eng] audio_out.c question

[Mitch Golden]

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006, Rich Felker wrote:

> OK, in all honesty.. The point was not that BSOD,registry,bloat are
> features, but rather than ridiculous unnecessary gimmicky features
> result in crashes, huge disgusting database structures for config, and
> 2gig ram usage. Just because windows has a 'feature' does not mean we
> should rush to copy that feature. Rather, people who understand the
> technology (particularly the hardware) should evaluate whether the
> feature makes sense, whether it can be implemented efficiently, what
> implications it has on other parts of the system, etc. And only then,
> after confirming that it's not a problem, should anyone even begin to
> consider implementing it.

Boy, people on this list sure do go at each other hammer and tongs! :>

As a practical matter I think it's clear that this stuff should be 
configurable in mplayer, and needs to be explained to the naive user.  So 
as far as what I'm going to code, I think I know what I need.

However, I would like to comment that I have always found it a royal 
nuisance to use Audacity (which uses OSS) along with other player apps, 
some of which, like mplayer, also use OSS.  All the contention for the 
sound device is a real pain.  I have no problem in principle with saying 
that ordinary user space apps can't open the raw device - we all agree to 
use X (or some other such subsystem) to manage the screen.  In that sense 
OSS is a bit of an outlier in that it really fails to manage the device.

That being said - I don't mean it as an endorsement of anything 
specifically about asla or artsd/esd or whatever.  I don't know enough 
about their architecture to know if they're good, bad or indifferent.  A 
good deal of what you're saying about the problems with alsa seem 
reasonable to me.  But I think unix does need something more comprehensive 
than OSS to allow for management of the sound card.

  - Mitch