Is there any way to loosen the requirement that writes to /dev/audio
be in multiples of the block size, or at least to not require such a
huge minimum block size? I have a gravis, and the driver for some
reason won't allow block sizes smaller than 1024. I have had problems
with a variety of software -- particularly but not exclusively under
linux emulation -- blithely setting the blocksize to 512 or 768, not
noticing this has failed, and consequently (because blocks are filled
out by silence) producing gappy, jittery sound. Moreover, since the
soundblaster driver has a smaller minimum blocksize, no one ever knows
what I'm talking about when I complain about this.

I'm sure purists will blame these failures on bad application
programming, but I consider it a pretty severe failing in the linux
emulation (I know at least one linux program that writes a byte at a
time to /dev/dsp, and we can't emulate this) ... not to mention a
too-extreme limitation to place on native sound applications which
feed their buffers in real time. Anyone have any idea how to go about
fixing this?

-- 
..nathaniel daw..........................................daw@panix.com..
 .ok soda may be the preferred drink of other people, such as yourself.