On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, Herb Peyerl wrote:

> I listen to mp3's on my laptop with the stock sound driver, while on planes
> or wherever... It sounds perfectly acceptable to me.  So what's the
> advantage to another sound driver?  Pardon me for possibly missing the
> obvious... Is it just that I've destroyed my ears and can't tell the
> difference?

The set of cards supported by two different implementations may not be the
same... certainly there are manufacturers who will only give out
programming info to a company that pays them a license fee and/or signs an
NDA. Likewise, it may be that their driver is more (or less) reliable than
the stock one.

For example, the YMF724. For many years NetBSD had no driver for this
chip. The 4front driver not only supports the chip but supports the
digital output feature where present. For me it was easier to buy a second
sound card, but the alternative would have been the 4front driver.

-- 
Gillette - the best a man can forget