From: Ray Cromwell <rjc@clark.net>
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 95 19:44:17 PDT
To: perry@piermont.com
Subject: Re: proliferation of voicesystems
In-Reply-To: <199508280120.VAA20942@frankenstein.piermont.com>
Message-ID: <199508280244.WAA12743@clark.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
> 
> Ray Cromwell writes:
> >   The problem is, what will be done for the Unix users? A standard
> > audio API is sorely missing in the unix world (NetWork Audio 
> > System and AudioFile aren't solutions)
> 
> It depends on what you mean by an API. If you are just talking about
> driver interfacing there are de facto standards at this point --
> basically everyone has been adopting the sun /dev/audio ioctls. 

  That's too low-level to deal with the proliferation of PC sound systems,
especially since even non-intel workstations are adopting PCi buses.
If I recall, /dev/audio relies on u-law/a-law encoding. That's only one
component of a higher level audio system. That's like having a
/dev/svga but no Motif library. Furthermore, a /dev/audio like
interface doesn't admit good hardware acceleration, such as if you
had to play an MPEG layerIII audio, but your sound card had a DSP.

-Ray