Proposal: Rationalizing Fedora Audio

[David Mohring]

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 14:13 +0200, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote:
> On Oct 18, 2004, at 13:59, Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
> 
> > Hi.
> >
> > David Mohring <heretic at ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> >
> >> Even using the ALSA interface, Fedora defaults to sending/receiving
> >> applications audio direct to the hardware device, hogging the 
> >> interface.
> >> By default audio output could go to ALSA or better yet a Dmix plug,
> >> where the source and destination could be selected and mixed together.
> >
> > Maybe I did not understand ALSA fully, but:
> > IMHO you will need dmix only when your sound hardware is not capable of
> > hardware mixing (like mine is, for example). If it was, you would not
> > need (or want, for that matter) to use dmix.
> 
> You are right... Some sound cards out there have several hardware audio 
> channels and can perform HW sound mixing of up to a number of sound 
> sources equal to its sound channels. For example, if the card has 4 HW 
> channels it can mix up to 4 simultaneous sound sources.
> 

Ok, how about giving the option to deploy audio as either 
1) Direct to card hardware 
   Card set up as /dev/dsp hw:0 etc 
2) Software Mix
   Dmix set up as /dev/dsp hw:0 etc
   Following audio devices set up /dev/dspX hw:X etc
And the future kernel hack
3) Multiuser Software Switch
   a /dev/tty like switch for /dev/dsp hw:0 to each users assigned 
    /dev/dsp hw:0 etc - either hardware or dmix device.

-- 
David Mohring <heretic at ihug.co.nz>