Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

shining · 2009-09-04 09:57:14

beginners guide is already awfully bloated, please don't bloat it more.

alsa is the standard way to get sound in linux, and everything is already installed by default (the kernel modules are automatically loaded)

it's perfectly fine to mention OSS is a good alternative, and the wiki already does that in the best way, by a small note linking to the OSS page.

Note: OSS4.1 has been released under a free license and is generally considered a significant improvement over older OSS versions. If you have issues with ALSA, or simply wish to explore another option, you may choose OSS4.1 instead. Instructions can be found in OSS

markg85 · 2009-09-04 10:55:59

shining wrote:

beginners guide is already awfully bloated, please don't bloat it more.
alsa is the standard way to get sound in linux, and everything is already installed by default (the kernel modules are automatically loaded)
it's perfectly fine to mention OSS is a good alternative, and the wiki already does that in the best way, by a small note linking to the OSS page.
Note: OSS4.1 has been released under a free license and is generally considered a significant improvement over older OSS versions. If you have issues with ALSA, or simply wish to explore another option, you may choose OSS4.1 instead. Instructions can be found in OSS

Well, my point is that the beginners guide promotes alsa and only mentions oss. So i want to make it more objective by only listing the pros and cons of both alsa and oss then provide a link to the wiki page for installation. That would be imho a better way then the current way although you lose the alsa installation instructions in the beginners guide.. It could alsa be possible to add that as well to the beginners guide..?

side idea.. perhaps a meta package needs to be installed that does all the installation things for alsa (or oss when you choose that) that way you can simply have something like:
pacman -S alsa-sound-system

that would install and configure alsa all at one blow.

for oss it would be:
pacman -S oss-sound-system

R00KIE · 2009-09-04 12:27:40

For oss it is pacman -S oss and you are almost good to go, just tune the mixer settings, for alsa what you are asking is the ubuntu way of doing things, the problems about selecting the right laptop model and other diverse module settings would be hidden, putting the burden of figuring things out on the developer/packager side.

I think that your effort to make using oss easier is a very good thing, although it's like shining says, almost everything alsa related comes with the kernel already and for some people things do work just fine (great if they go, they even don't need to care about the problems of hibernating/suspending) for the rest of us a good wiki page appart from the main beginners guide may be better.

Arch is modular so if something doesn't work for you later you can most probably just go back to that step and choose something else, keeping the beginners guide easy to follow and not too long may be advantageous to keep people from getting lost, after all it's a beginners guide

shining · 2009-09-04 13:40:32

R00KIE wrote:

For oss it is pacman -S oss and you are almost good to go, just tune the mixer settings, for alsa what you are asking is the ubuntu way of doing things, the problems about selecting the right laptop model and other diverse module settings would be hidden, putting the burden of figuring things out on the developer/packager side.
I think that your effort to make using oss easier is a very good thing, although it's like shining says, almost everything alsa related comes with the kernel already and for some people things do work just fine (great if they go, they even don't need to care about the problems of hibernating/suspending) for the rest of us a good wiki page appart from the main beginners guide may be better.
Arch is modular so if something doesn't work for you later you can most probably just go back to that step and choose something else, keeping the beginners guide easy to follow and not too long may be advantageous to keep people from getting lost, after all it's a beginners guide

thank you for backing me up

to markg85 : all your work on OSS, testing, contributing to the wiki page, and discussing is highly welcome !
but please don't transform all guides / arch install guides in a alsa vs oss war^Wcomparison.
There is no point doing that, there is one well established default / standard nowadays, and believe it or not, it works fine for many people.
Like any technology, it has its flaws, and it is good to know there is a good alternative when the default one just fails.

I read the link a while ago about why alsa sucks and why oss is better, and I found it interesting, but why should I bother replacing something which is official and included in the kernel and which works, by something external ?

when oss v5 is complete and stable and back in the kernel, then I will be perfectly fine with your proposal

Willie Green · 2009-09-04 15:02:45

shining wrote:

I read the link a while ago about why alsa sucks and why oss is better, and I found it interesting, but why should I bother replacing something which is official and included in the kernel and which works, by something external ?

That's precisely why I'm still confused as to which one is "lighter" weight and uses fewer resources.

Seems to me that the one that's built-in to the kernel would have a natural advantage in that department.

But that's just my simple-minded newbie way of understanding things, and I'll gladly switch to OSS if I'm confident that, yes, OSS IS lighter weight and uses fewer resources.

It seems a pretty simple question.
I'm kind of disappointed that more people aren't saying "Yes" or "No", one way or the other.
But then again, maybe there really isn't much difference in that aspect as there is with other points of comparison.

ngoonee · 2009-09-04 15:23:18

On today's machines, I doubt you'll find either OSS or alsa using significant resources, short of an actual bug.

Having never tried OSS, I'm not really qualified to comment, but I believe all the jazz OSS-supporters have about the terrific sound is in comparison with alsa's dmix (which has terrible software mixing and resampling). Using alsa direct shouldn't have much difference from using OSS, and with pulseaudio to do your mixing, you're home free. Point to note: I believe pulse IS heavier than OSS, but once again, on modern systems you really wouldn't notice.

Misfit138 · 2009-09-04 15:45:02

shining wrote:

...alsa is the standard way to get sound in linux, and everything is already installed by default (the kernel modules are automatically loaded)
it's perfectly fine to mention OSS is a good alternative, and the wiki already does that in the best way, by a small note linking to the OSS page.
Note: OSS4.1 has been released under a free license and is generally considered a significant improvement over older OSS versions. If you have issues with ALSA, or simply wish to explore another option, you may choose OSS4.1 instead. Instructions can be found in OSS

Completely agreed. Leave it 'as is' until OSSv5 is in mainline.

sonoran · 2009-09-11 05:05:29

I noticed that after updating to oss-4.2_2000-1 on 9/10, ossxmix no longer has the "production" setting in the vmix0-src menu. There are only 3 choices now - Fast, High, and OFF.

sand_man · 2009-09-11 06:28:35

sonoran wrote:

I noticed that after updating to oss-4.2_2000-1 on 9/10, ossxmix no longer has the "production" setting in the vmix0-src menu. There are only 3 choices now - Fast, High, and OFF.

I noticed it too. Does it matter? Too many selections, there was probably little difference between them anyway.

sonoran · 2009-09-11 07:49:18

No difference that I can hear. I might go in search of the changelog just out of curiosity.

Gen2ly · 2009-09-11 11:35:28

The OSS page got almost a complete rewrite and experiences the following problems:

Extraneous indentation
Extraneous details
No use of code boxes
Use of custom CSS instead of wiki templates
Partiality

Reverted to previous version of wiki page as this was far from kiss.

Rewritten page

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?tit … ldid=75378

Last edited by Gen2ly (2009-09-11 11:36:54)

ugkbunb · 2009-09-12 06:17:25

sonoran wrote:

I noticed that after updating to oss-4.2_2000-1 on 9/10, ossxmix no longer has the "production" setting in the vmix0-src menu. There are only 3 choices now - Fast, High, and OFF.

Weird... because the /usr/lib/oss/conf/osscore.conf has not be changed to reflect it

# Possible values are:
# 0 - D lowest quality (normally equals to 1=low quality)
# 1 - L low quality (spline interpolation)
# 2 - M medium quality (lagrange interpolation)
# 3 - H high quality (DEFAULT)
# 4 - HX high quality (high quality with extra precision)
# 5 - P production quality
# 6 - PX production quality (prod quality with extra precision)
#
src_quality=6

To those wavering on Alsa vs OSS... why not try them both out for a week or so and figure out which one suits you better... that what I ended up doing and am now deadset that for my needs OSS > ALSA.

Last edited by ugkbunb (2009-09-12 06:17:55)

Anonymo · 2009-10-30 00:04:03

ugkbunb wrote:

sonoran wrote:
I noticed that after updating to oss-4.2_2000-1 on 9/10, ossxmix no longer has the "production" setting in the vmix0-src menu. There are only 3 choices now - Fast, High, and OFF.
Weird... because the /usr/lib/oss/conf/osscore.conf has not be changed to reflect it
# Possible values are:
# 0 - D lowest quality (normally equals to 1=low quality)
# 1 - L low quality (spline interpolation)
# 2 - M medium quality (lagrange interpolation)
# 3 - H high quality (DEFAULT)
# 4 - HX high quality (high quality with extra precision)
# 5 - P production quality
# 6 - PX production quality (prod quality with extra precision)
#
src_quality=6
To those wavering on Alsa vs OSS... why not try them both out for a week or so and figure out which one suits you better... that what I ended up doing and am now deadset that for my needs OSS > ALSA.

This is great, should be in the wiki
Edit: /usr/lib/oss/conf/osscore.conf is the correct path now

Arch Linux

#26 2009-09-04 09:57:14

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#27 2009-09-04 10:55:59

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#28 2009-09-04 12:27:40

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#29 2009-09-04 13:40:32

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#30 2009-09-04 15:02:45

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#31 2009-09-04 15:23:18

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#32 2009-09-04 15:45:02

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#33 2009-09-11 05:05:29

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#34 2009-09-11 06:28:35

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#35 2009-09-11 07:49:18

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#36 2009-09-11 11:35:28

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#37 2009-09-12 06:17:25

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

#38 2009-10-30 00:04:03

Re: Beginners Guide sound installation -- OSS and ALSA objective features

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