On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 05:29:29PM +1100, Daniel Carosone wrote:
> If instead, audio was a device that walked the list of available
> audioN devices until it found one that wasn't already open, then most
> apps - and their view of device close semantics - would just continue
> to work.

The application may want to open the corresponding /dev/mixerN as well -
how would this be possible?  (Ie. if the application is using the
underlying /dev/audio3, it also wants to use /dev/mixer3, not /dev/mixer2.)

On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 03:47:22PM +1100, matthew green wrote:
> well, no.  keep the software audio mixer *in userland* [1].
> 
> [1] gnome & kde both have such daemons, and i believe there is at least
> one more that's (now less) commonly used...

In kde at least, the sound daemon seems to cause a varying delay to sounds
so they get played back too late.

  -jm