[ale] Is Sound in Linux Single-Threaded?

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Sat Jun 21 14:17:46 EDT 2008


Depends on software. ESD (and now pulseaudio) support multiple simultaneous
inputs to a single output. So I can play 2 sound tracks at once (cool! Pink
Floyd and Bach at the same time). The frontend tool, ESD or pulse, combine
the data to make a single output stream.

On the output side, the process is single threaded. It would be very
difficult to share the hardware device with multiple threads.

2008/6/21 Marc Ferguson <marcferguson at gmail.com>:

>  Hi all,
>
> Based on my observation it seems that the sound for my linux box is single
> threaded.  If one device uses sound, it seems to lock it and if another
> application tries to use it, it is pretty much unsuccessful.  Is this true
> or do I not have the right drivers installed.  Here's my setup:
>
> Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
> Model: SBx00 Azalia
> Module: snd-hda-intel
>
> PCM Device: ALC883 Analog
>
> ALSA Driver version: Driver Version 1.0.16rc2
> ALSA Lib package(s): alsa-lib-1.0.16-3.fc8
> ALSA Utils package(s): alsa-utils-1.0.16-3.fc8
>
> I'm running Fedora 8.  Thanks for the clarification.
>
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>
>


-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
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