how does alsa work (was Re: OT: performance problems.)

[dman <dsh8290@rit.edu>]

On Mon, Jan 07, 2002 at 03:33:19PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
| also sprach Dmitriy <ace22b@yahoo.com> [2002.01.07.0704 +0100]:
| > Did you check if XMMS uses any wacky output plugins like ESD?
| 
| it writes OSD to /dev/dsp. then there's alsa that converts it to line
| data.

Ok, this sounds contrary to what I've heard before.  I've heard that
ALSA, unlike OSS, allows multiple processes to output sound
simultaneously.  How, then, can it allow that if all processes need to
have /dev/dsp open?  Isn't only one process allowed to have /dev/dsp
open at a time (half of the reason for creating esd in the first
place)?

-D

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