Re: Sound, ALSA, Blog-Video
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 8:19 pm
by Lactobacillus
As far as I read in the forum the sound is not working atm.
Reason: Missing sound drivers (ALSA ?)
There is an alpha driver but it is not really working.
But why is there sound in this video:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/431
Sorry for the stupid question. I am a bit confused ...
Re: Sound, ALSA, Blog-Video
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:34 pm
by mahjongg
There is an alpha driver but it is not really working.
Who says its really not working, its an alpha quality ALSA, that means a lot of bug fixing has yet to occur, but its really working, warts and all.
Its only turned off by default, you can turn it on easily enough with the (command line) command:
modprobe snd_bcm2835
The main problem with it, it seems, is that it is vulnerable to latency problems, that means that small disruptions in the audio data-stream are not resolved gracefully, resulting in audible disruptions. Most obviously noticed when moving the mousepointer a lot during playback of audio.
But during video playback you normally do not move the mousepointer a lot.
Also its perfectly possible that ALSA wasn"t used, but another audio driver was hacked in, or that a different distro was used with a hard coded audio system.
That might be the case in XBMC.
ALSA is a generic audio driver, that should work with all the programs running on the OS that generate sound, at the same time, and also interfaces with audio mixer logic and stuff like that.