Oss4 Sound Driver


efegea

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I know that sound system on the Pandora will be ALSA, but is there any possibility in the future to a OSS4 one to be developed? Is the ALSA driver open sorce?

Is widely known that ALSA have worse sound quality than the previous linux sound system, OSS (Open Sound System), and is more complicated for applications developers becuase a hardest to use API.

There was a Closed Source version of OSS, that was even better. Now, that version got a new release, the fourth, and got a new license, GPL. (Althouth there is still a free as in free beer but closed source version, the GPL'd free as in freedom version is the interesting one)

Before I knew about ALSA bad sound quality, I already feel that it sounded bad. Looking for ways to improve my sound quality, found that is true, ALSA sounds bad always, in all kinds of sound cards, and discovered OSS4. I installed it on my Gentoo x86 system (installation was VERY VERY easy) and was amazed as how my Sound Blaster Live! was giving me cristal clear sound again, as it used to do in Windows.

A very interesting article http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2007/05/s...d-in-linux.html
 
OSS isn't supported in the kernel; the default is ALSA.

The arguments for OSS, while perhaps reasonable, cannot keep OSS from slowly fading out of Linux existence. ALSA and PulseAudio are the only ones used in desktop environments anymore. (ESD and aRts are hanging in there, too.)
 
I don't think that it being the only one used on desktop enviroments is a reasonable argument for the Pandora to have bad sound quality. We don't want it to sound bad and ALSA sounds bad.
 
efegea said:
I know that sound system on the Pandora will be ALSA, but is there any possibility in the future to a OSS4 one to be developed? Is the ALSA driver open sorce?
It could be possible, but I'm not sure OSS4 runs on ARM. It doesn't have drivers for OMAP and tps65950 codec too. ALSA is open source, you can already find drivers in kernel git.
Pandora will have OSS emulation enabled.

efegea said:
ALSA sounds bad always, in all kinds of sound cards
Well it might have dodgy drivers for some cards, but I don't believe it's bad with all of them. I've read reports that OSS4 is inferior with some types of cards. I use OSS4 on my desktop though.
 
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efegea said:
I don't think that it being the only one used on desktop enviroments is a reasonable argument for the Pandora to have bad sound quality. We don't want it to sound bad and ALSA sounds bad.
Not bad enough, apparently, to keep it from becoming one of the most popular sound systems. ;)

Edit: Grammar. Bah-humbug, or something like that.
Another Edit: Oh, wait, I had it right. Huh.
icon4.gif
 
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I've got some problems with the default ALSA configuration for my integrated ALC650 (VIA VT8235 South Bridge), but solved it after some reading (and after a lot of searching).

Once solved, it sounds as crystal clear as my Windows drivers.

So that ALSA configuration is probably the worst problem. Once it's solved, there should be no problems in sound quality. :)
 
I haven't seen any proof that ALSA sounds bad. It sounds great on all the computers I've used it on, compared to the windows drivers.
The only argument to be made could be the more compliated API, but there's alsa-oss for that.

In the very long term it may be better for linux to switch back to OSS as the default (although even that is debatable), but right now ALSA is the better choice. Stuff should be using higher level things anyway, like PulseAudio or Phonon.
 
My biggest fear is, that in such a tightly packed board there would be something that interferes with the analog parts of the soundcard or output. I have an old notebook, what crackled all the time when there was an amplifier atached to it and when you click the mouse you're able to hear it in the Speakers. The cdrom also.
 
mcobit said:
My biggest fear is, that in such a tightly packed board there would be something that interferes with the analog parts of the soundcard or output. I have an old notebook, what crackled all the time when there was an amplifier atached to it and when you click the mouse you're able to hear it in the Speakers. The cdrom also.
I once had an external HDD (called Plugger, I think) for the parallel port on my 486, a whopping 480MB. All access was audible through the sound card. I don't think anything like that would occur on the Pandora, the devs should have noticed such a glitch by now.
 
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The biggest argument against ALSA is that no other UNIXes use it and it adds to the mess that is Linux sound today (don't think it's a mess? Then you haven't been keeping up).

However, OSS4 violates certain kernel policies in Linux and will thus never be considered for mainline inclusion unless it's basicly made into an ALSA clone.

On the plus side, PulseAudio, once it gets it's glitch-free playback system included in most mainstream distros, will be awesome, and the definite way forward. But until that actually happens... :/
 
Wait, doesn't OSS only allow one application to use sound at a time, while ALSA allows for many to? Thats what I remember.... correct me if I'm wrong.
 
PSyMastR said:
Wait, doesn't OSS only allow one application to use sound at a time, while ALSA allows for many to? Thats what I remember.... correct me if I'm wrong.
thats only true for alsa emulated oss which doesn't support mixing of any kind(without aoss).
OSS4 has full software and hardware mixing, even for alsa emulation.
 
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PSyMastR said:
Wait, doesn't OSS only allow one application to use sound at a time, while ALSA allows for many to? Thats what I remember.... correct me if I'm wrong.
Nope, OSS is awesome nowadays. I switched from ALSA to it because I had mixing and latency issues. Now I can get great sound from many applications at the same time. Except for those few damn programs that limit themselves to ALSA, pffffssh.


edit: Vimacs, alsa emulation in OSS? How? :)
 
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.Gogeta§§J4BR. said:
Is sound still an issue in linux? damn...
Yep. This is actually where having choice is a problem. :p

I was going to suggest PulseAudio on top so you can use whatever you want, but then I realized that its OSS compatibility is inherently not 100% (due to the differences in how each streams audio).

Edit: Is there a way to up the cached audio in PulseAudio to reduce some of those issues? Having PulseAudio be the "standard" system on the Pandora would actually be a nice idea if it could be made to work with the troublesome OSS.
 
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I used to have issues with pulseaudio but not since ubuntu 8.10 came out. The new version seems to be pretty snappy (old issues such as laggy audio in games like etqw is completely gone, it works well with wine via padsp/oss, etc.)

My understanding is that oss4 is not going to ever be officially supported because it does things in kernel space that the kernel developers think should stay in user space (mixing/etc.)
 
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