In message <40C8D3FF.5090606@bit-1.de>, Werner Backes writes:
>Yes, but I think this refers to the synthesizer (MIDI) part of the
>sound hardware. "samples" in this context means ROM based (fixed)
>audio samples to emulate music instruments like pianos or drums.

Could be, but a lot of sound hardware lets you load custom samples in memory.

>("samples") at once. This is why there are soundcards that can
>play back 64 or 128 samples simultaniously. But as this are ROM
>samples, they cannot be changed and this feature is of no use if
>you want to playback .. let's say 5 mp3's at once.

True.  But most PC hardware can easily handle very complicated video games,
giving them at least two simultaneous full stereo audio tracks, as well as
a fairly large number of sound effects.

>There may be sound cards that uses RAM in addition to ROM for the
>MIDI instrument samples to allow an upload of new instruments.
>This feature could possibly be tweaked into multi channel audio
>playback, but I wouldn't bet that it's possible to reload sample
>memory while playback.

I would, partially because we've got a couple of drivers which do it by
probing as multiple audio devices... esa and ess, I think?  Modern sound
hardware is fairly impressive, and has a lot of cool tricks in it.

-s