Gert, One reason why "cat xxx.wav > /dev/dsp" doesn't work is that the /dev/dsp driver sets close on exec. It shouldn't. But it should have a "fixup_after_exec". One problem is that "new" calls calloc, and that won't be preserved through execs. You need to use the cygheap (ccalloc). But is it necessary to allocate audio_in/_out at open time, rather than when playing start? The flags passed to open are stored somewhere, so they can be used to determine how the device was opened.
Also won't hurt to call "nohandle (true)". One interesting aspect is that /dev/dsp does not have a Windows handle. But when fd is < 2, Cygwin will still call SetStdHandle. Not sure what will happen. Pierre
