[PATCH 2/4] conf: allow to map sound device to host device

[Daniel P. Berrangé]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 08:55:02AM +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>   Hi,
> 
> > IIUC, QEMU can expose multiple sound devices to the guest too.
> > 
> > I think this means that we can have a M:N relationship between
> > a sound device, and an audio backend, not just 1:1.
> 
> It's 1:N.  Sound devices have a single backend, but a backends can
> service multiple sound devices.

Sigh yes, of course, wasn't thinking right.

> > Assuming I'm right about the M:N relationship, I assume that
> > of multiple cards all do playback concurrently, something
> > will have todo mixing of the streams ?
> 
> In general it is a good idea to go with 1:1 if possible.  With
> pulseaudio this works fine.  You'll have two streams to pulseaudio
> then, pulseaudio does the mixing, and you'll see both streams in
> mixer apps.
> 
> OSS devices tend to not like being opened multiple times, so you
> have to go with 1:N if you want multiple sound devices.  qemu mixes
> the playback streams then.  Not fully sure what happens with
> recording, probably all sound devices see the very same stream.

Ok, so it sounds like we need the XML schema I illustrated. Even though
we'll recommend 1:1 for general use, we'll want the option to supoort
1:N setups.

Regards,
Daniel
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