I'd like to get rid of pulseaudio but ...

[suvayu ali]

2009/5/28 Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik at iki.fi>:
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:08:37AM -0700, john wendel wrote:
>> Kevin Kofler wrote:
>> >It makes sound just work, without apps fighting for the sound device (or
>> >multiple incompatible sound servers all trying to "fix" this fighting for
>> >the sound device). No more annoyances like games failing to play sound
>> >because some GUI event sound was still being played when they tried opening
>> >the sound device. (I've seen, or rather heard, that happen way too often in
>> >pre-PulseAudio times.)
>> >
>> >Most sound cards don't do mixing in hardware. A few do support it, but the
>> >ALSA driver doesn't. Only few sound cards can do it and have ALSA support
>> >for it. So PulseAudio is a mixing solution which works for everyone.
>> >
>> >        Kevin Kofler
>> >
>>
>> Strange, I've never had a sound card that didn't have a hardware mixer.
>> And the on-board Intel hd audio that I'm using now does too. I don't
>> think PulseAudio is evil, it just doesn't bring anything to the party.
>>
>
> You're mixing up things :-)
>
> "Mixer" usually means the device/application you use to control volume level settings.
>
> In this context "hardware mixing" meant mixing up multiple audio streams
> (from different applications) and all of them playing at once.
>
> Your on-board Intel hd audio cannot mix audio streams in hardware.. I think.
> Some Creative cards can do that.
>

Most of the modern Intel HDA cards _are_ capable of mixing streams. I
have owned one such card since 2007. Also most of the hi-end boards
today support multiple streams. However I am not sure whether
pulseaudio can stream two different streams to these sound cards and
let it playback in two different devices. A very common situation
would be something like a skype call on a headphone without
interrupting music playback on external speakers.

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.