Advice to an audiophobe ??

[David Timms]

William Case wrote:
> David, Thank you;
> 
> If you cut and pasted these answers, I would love to know where (or what
> site) you got them.  If you took the time to write them off the top of
> your head, I doubly thank you. You have given me enough information to
> do some proper research of my own particular questions and do a small
> write up for my own use.
Unfortunately the background digital audio theory comes straight from my 
electronics and communication engineering degree course (15 years ago), 
but I guess became "common knowledge" to me due to interest and 
continued usage, both for at home and work (where we use audio DSP black 
boxes to save on needing to supply separate audio mixers, equalizers, 
volume controls, and audio routing boxes to client jobs). If you are 
into guitar, you might like to try a program like rakarrack. This 
provides audio processing functionality similar to what those DSP boxes 
can do, without the expense; but it does require a pretty decent CPU, 
and an understanding of the jack audio connection kit.

While I was expanding on Tim's answer's, I found myself starting to 
spout technical terms; I just backpedalled each time and tried to find 
non-technical words to describe the way things are.

In terms of audio apps in fedora, my summarizing way over-simplifies 
things, but hopefully it gives a good idea of the makeup of the system. 
( http://www.linux.com/feature/119926
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio flowchart a few screens down
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis.html for a what 
sound system fits best where)

Thanks for the complement, David T.