On 2004-01-29, Kirk Strauser penned: > --=-=-= Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > At 2004-01-29T17:40:49Z, "s. keeling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> If you ever figure out what esd is there for, I'd like to know. 'Til >> now, it seems everyone mentioning it is saying, "Once I killed esd, >> $blah started working." > > Seriously? OK. ESD, the Enlightenment Sound Daemon, is a server that > programs connect to whenever they want to play a sound. There are a > few reasons for such a thing, but the main ones are: > > 1) The old-style /dev/dsp only allows one process to use it at a > time. You couldn't listens to MP3s and still get audio alerts from > other programs at the same time.
See, I thought I remembered that, but without arts or esd running, I was able to play an mp3 on xmms while playing a cd on grip. I heard both songs coming through the speakers. Well, I'm under the impression I had neither running. I seem to have gstreamer-artsd installed, but no other artsd stuff. I don't recall whether anything arts-related showed up in the ps listing when I was running the above experiment. > 2) It serves as a compatibility layer to provide a standardized > sound API across multiple operating systems so that programmers > wouldn't have to know the intricacies of, say, Linux, FreeBSD, and > Solaris just to add sound to their program. That's a good point. > 3) Networking. You can run ESD on one computer attached to a good > sound system and point your client programs at that server to play > their sound. Very handy if you want a tiny, low-powered "sound > server" attached to your home stereo. For example, you could set > XMMS to stream audio to that computer so that you hear your MP3s on > good speakers, but still hear audio alerts on your PC speakers. Ooh. I didn't know that. Does arts do this? > Having said that, almost everyone hates ESD because of various > performance and audio quality problems. KDE's "artsd" is generally > regarded as a superior replacement, although it also has its > detractors. Since you seem to actually understand all this stuff ... How does alsa fit into all of this? If I have working sound drivers in the kernel, should I care about alsa at all? -- monique -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
