Sound system

Drivers

ALSA

The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) is a Linux kernel component intended to provide device drivers for sound cards.

• ALSA
• Wikipedia:Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
• http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page

OSS

The Open Sound System is an alternative sound architecture for Unix-like and POSIX-compatible systems. OSS version 3 was the original sound system for Linux and is in the kernel but was superceded by ALSA in 2002 when OSS version 4 became proprietary software. OSSv4 became free software again in 2007 when 4Front Technologies released its source code and provided it under the GPL license.

• OSS
• Wikipedia:Open Sound System
• http://www.opensound.com/

Sound servers

JACK

The Jack-Audio-Connection-Kit is a sound server for advanced use, and is generally used by professionals looking to record. Regardless it does support mixing, although to get non JACK aware applications to work, a plugin has to be provided. The alsa-plugins package will pull this in.

• JACK
• Wikipedia:JACK
• http://jackaudio.org/

JACK2

Also called JACK-mp, it is the next version of JACK, with support for multi-processors and for network audio.

PulseAudio

• PulseAudio
• Wikipedia:PulseAudio
• http://www.pulseaudio.org/

NAS

• Wikipedia:Network Audio System

Audio programs

• Lightweight audio players
• Common audio applications (players, visualization, editing)

Latency

• irqbalance
• real time patches for kernel26
• schedtool/nice (with sound server)

Related Articles

• Pro Audio
• MIDI
• Codecs
• Disable PC Speaker Beep