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What is Alsa and what is not?
I have seen alsa and meny computars with diferet chipset. So, does it mean Alsa is universal driver for audio for all computars? Or alsa is not driver?
Is the unique software I need to make computars working (sound) well?
I mean, do I need un audio driver and alsa or only alsa, or alsa all I need?
Definaly, what is alsa and what is not?
Distribution: ubuntu netbook 10.04, jolicloud 1.1, and a custom one-off distro
Posts: 32
Rep:
OK, ALSA is as its described : (A)dvanced (L)inux (S)ound (A)rchitecture if I recall correctly. It's not a driver as I see it, but a program to control the sound driver. There are quite a few sound architectures out there. Alsa just happens to be (in my humble opinion) the best.
You still have a driver for your audio, a sound architecture just tells it what to do.
I'm not totally agree with the explication above. ALSA is a common driver for every supported sound hardware under linux: you've got the pure driver part, different for every soundcard, and the user-space interface, common to all... But, while you can use just ALSA to have a functional sound system, you'd better to use a sound server, you can see it as an interface between ALSA and any application that need it (like a mixer if you want). As far as I know, you have PulseAudio, mostly for every day use, and JACK designed for advanced audio applications...
But don't worry, most sounds application can use any of these sound interface.
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