[sldev] gstreamer

[Jan Ciger]

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Henri Beauchamp wrote:

> I personally got all audio device usage conflicts solved by getting rid
> of ALSA and *all* sound wrappers/daemons (pulseaudio, esd, jackit, arts,
> you name it) and installing OSS v4.1 (http://www.opensound.com/oss.html).
> 

Henri, that is unfortunately not an option for the majority of Linux
users. They do not have neither the skills nor the means to install this
version of OSS. Distros will not ship it, because it is not free (libre)
software.

The current trend is the standardization on PulseAudio that provides
more features than just software mixing - e.g. transparent moving of
audio streams between devices (SL using speakers, but when I want to use
voice, I could move the sound to my headset instead), hot plugging of
devices and many other things. I am not advocating Pulse here, it has
its own share of problems (mainly stability), but it seems to be the
emerging standard sound system on Linux. Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva all
ship it by default, Suse probably too.

SL works with PulseAudio quite fine because Pulse behaves as both Alsa
device if a plugin is installed (e.g. Ubuntu and Mandriva does that by
default) and can provide also the esound (esd) API. The only part that
is not working right is the voice part - the chosen device is ignored
(e.g. I ask voice to play on headphones, but it still comes out of the
speakers) and enabled voice crashes the PulseAudio server after a while.

Regards,

Jan

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