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  • #61
    Ossv4 is broken for me, but ALSA works perfectly fine. With OSSv4 sound is completly distorted. It is a mess between high level white noise and some other noises. Unusbale.

    FP in kernel is idiotic for a lot of reasons you can easily find on lkml - and FP in kernel is completly unneeded for sound.

    I have read the threead. I have seen sound and video in sync with alsa, with and without dmix. And I have seen OSSv4 fucking up my hardware so hard, that I had to do a cold boot to get the soundcard back to work again. Something ALSA never did.

    OSSv4 is broken. Broken by design and implementation. Just because it seems to work for you does not mean that it is the right choice. Or a good choice.

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    • #62
      Originally posted by energyman View Post
      Ossv4 is broken for me, but ALSA works perfectly fine. With OSSv4 sound is completly distorted. It is a mess between high level white noise and some other noises. Unusbale.
      Of course that is not how it is supposed to be. This is clearly a bug.


      FP in kernel is idiotic for a lot of reasons you can easily find on lkml - and FP in kernel is completly unneeded for sound.
      Maybe, according to some people's point of view. But the end effect also matters: acceptable audio latency. And this a pro-in-kernel-FP argument; it simply performs better.

      I have read the threead. I have seen sound and video in sync with alsa, with and without dmix.
      I was never able to get this. Note that watching a video doesn't exhibit this behavior; the media player always syncs correctly. I'm talking about real-time stuff, like games and the desktop sound notifications. I can only get this with ALSA by disabling dmix. And without mixing, I'm sure you agree, every sound system sucks.


      And I have seen OSSv4 fucking up my hardware so hard, that I had to do a cold boot to get the soundcard back to work again. Something ALSA never did.
      The first time I tried OSS4, this also happened to me on my SB Live 24-bit. I posted on their forums, and they actually fixed the problem. It was a driver bug.

      OSSv4 is broken. Broken by design and implementation. Just because it seems to work for you does not mean that it is the right choice. Or a good choice.
      "Broken by design and implementation" purely based on a single bug and in your opinion that FP doesn't belong in the kernel, yes. But many people think it's OK to have FP in the kernel, and they're not affected by a bug. So for them, OSS4 simply rocks.
      Last edited by RealNC; 27 September 2009, 11:31 PM.

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      • #63
        Originally posted by RealNC View Post
        Maybe, according to some people's point of view. But the end effect also matters: acceptable audio latency. And this a pro-in-kernel-FP argument; it simply performs better.
        fp in kernel has zero influence on latency - and fucks up everything else. It is not 'my' POV or of 'some people' it is the POV of lkml. Hmm.. but for some reason 4front and you are smarter than them.

        It can be done in userspace - and latencies are not an argument either.

        The kernel does not store/restore the fp registers for performance reasons. As soon as in kernel stuff plays around with that performance drops and latencies increases - for all apps using floating point.

        You might want to think about that for a while

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        • #64
          Originally posted by RealNC View Post
          I don't really care about all that. All I care is that ALSA is broken and OSS4 is not.
          For you. Many people report the opposite. But sure, feel free to use what you like.

          I just hope OSS4 will not disappear because if it does, it will leave me without good audio on Linux.
          Why do you use Linux in the first place? It's a serious question. Some people use Linux because of Free Software concerns and/or wanting to hack on things, but you seem much more focused on "what works" and don't seem to care at all about Free Software. Am I wrong?

          I should hope at the least that with your attitude you're not one of those people who likes to bash Microsoft for producing other software that many people seem to want to use, and which is more likely to have non-broken drivers for the latest hardware.

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          • #65
            Originally posted by John Thacker View Post
            For you. Many people report the opposite. But sure, feel free to use what you like.



            Why do you use Linux in the first place? It's a serious question. Some people use Linux because of Free Software concerns and/or wanting to hack on things, but you seem much more focused on "what works" and don't seem to care at all about Free Software. Am I wrong?

            I should hope at the least that with your attitude you're not one of those people who likes to bash Microsoft for producing other software that many people seem to want to use, and which is more likely to have non-broken drivers for the latest hardware.
            What on earth are you talking about? 1st, I use whatever the heck I please and no one has the slightest right to criticize me. 2nd, OSS4 is GPL software.

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            • #66
              Originally posted by energyman View Post
              fp in kernel has zero influence on latency - and fucks up everything else. It is not 'my' POV or of 'some people' it is the POV of lkml. Hmm.. but for some reason 4front and you are smarter than them.

              It can be done in userspace - and latencies are not an argument either.

              The kernel does not store/restore the fp registers for performance reasons. As soon as in kernel stuff plays around with that performance drops and latencies increases - for all apps using floating point.

              You might want to think about that for a while
              The much better FP mixing performance of OSS4 proves you wrong.

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              • #67
                RealNC, have you got any evidence showing this latency is a systemic flaw in ALSA, other than the fact that you personally haven't been able to get it working?

                The idea that a piece of software as widely used as ALSA has a bug specific to you is a little hard to believe. I personally have never had any issues with ALSA.

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                • #68
                  Originally posted by RealNC View Post
                  The much better FP mixing performance of OSS4 proves you wrong.
                  and you seem not to know what you are talking about.

                  fp and performance have nothing to do with each other. OSS does not use FP for performance but for perceived 'better' audio quality.

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                  • #69
                    Originally posted by RealNC View Post
                    The much better FP mixing performance of OSS4 proves you wrong.
                    And it also renders OSS4 irrelevant on any portable music player without floating point hardware.

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                    • #70
                      Originally posted by krazy View Post
                      RealNC, have you got any evidence showing this latency is a systemic flaw in ALSA, other than the fact that you personally haven't been able to get it working?
                      Like what? Also, I *did* get it working. It's just that it's simply too slow. I do for example something in a game that produces a sound (like shooting something), and the animation plays immediately but with the corresponding sound becoming audible about 0.2/0.3 seconds later. Or I press a key in a software synthesizer, and the sound comes also later. With OSS4 those problems don't exist. Sound there comes immediately. If I disable dmix in ALSA, then those problems go away. But without dmix it's blocking hell.

                      The idea that a piece of software as widely used as ALSA has a bug specific to you is a little hard to believe. I personally have never had any issues with ALSA.
                      Now that is hard to believe too, since when ALSA first started, it wasn't working well for almost everyone. But OK, if you weren't around back then... :P

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