Pulse is just a layer that sits on top of either ALSA or OSS. ALSA is still likely doing the actual heavy lifting and talking to the hardware.
The advantage is that pulse provides a nice consistent, *well documented* API (ALSA is kind of a nightmare in this regard), and handles multiple audio streams. This means that the KDE, Gnome, Unity, lqde, xfce etc. people do not have to constantly re-invent the wheel and application developers do not have to worry about what DE an end user has (this used to actually be a problem many years ago before pulse came along). JACK also sits on top ALSA and provides much of the same functionality as pulse (and a whole lot more). JACK is also a lot more complicated since it solves a very different problem, and initially jackd and pulse were not aware of each other and thus did not play nice together. These problems are largely behind us as both projects are pretty mature at this point. That was the short version. The short short version is that pulse adds a layer on top of alsa that makes it easy to use. Most people do not need to know anything about this as consumer audio on Linux largely just works these days. "Pro" audio or "Prosumer" audio still has some rough edges, though this is largely due to spotty hardware support. If your hardware is well supported then you should be good to go. On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 7:52 AM, Joe S <joes...@shaw.ca> wrote: > I'm seeing pulse audio installed on a few distros. I am > wondering what the advantage is of pulse audio over alsa for > sound? > > On Fri, 9 May 2014 15:26:05 -0600 > Gustin Johnson <gus...@meganerd.ca> wrote: > > > The "average" person is not doing multi-track sequencing, > > composition, and arrangements. To be clear, the audio stack > > he is referring to has nothing to do with general purpose > > sound playback, which is what pulse is for. > > > > It is great to see that this area is getting some more > > attention. While Linux is used in a number of physical > > appliance like DAWs, desktop Linux has always been a bit of > > challenge. We are in much better shape today than even just a > > few years ago, and leaps and bounds ahead of when I first > > started to use Linux for "pro" audio (2002 or thereabouts). > > > > UbuntuStudio, KXStudio, Planet CCRMA are some other > > distributions that make installing and configuring this stack > > a little less challenging. > > > > > > > > On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Mel Walters > > <melwalt...@telus.net> wrote: > > > > > On Thu, 2014-05-08 at 13:14 -0600, Bogi wrote: > > > > http://www.linuxvoice.com/?cat=2,10 > > > > > > I was looking at this earlier and watched some of their > > > videos. The average person may happiest with pulsed audio > > > for the typical desktop use. Studio quality sound in your > > > home computer is so cool to do with FLOSS [1] now, but worth > > > the learning curve if you get into that. > > > > > > Audacity can be used as is on your existing system to post > > > process your audio files. > > > > > > avLinux is another audio distribution very worth having a > > > peek at: > > > > > > > > > http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=08316 > > > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVLinux > > > > > > > > > [1] Free, as in "Libre" Open Source Software > > > > > > > > > Mel > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > clug-talk mailing list > > > clug-talk@clug.ca > > > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > > > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > > > **Please remove these lines when replying > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > clug-talk@clug.ca > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying >
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