[PlanetCCRMA] alsaplayer does not play / no gui

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

> >>only alsaplayer does not play anything. also it does not start display 
> >>any gui if started from the 'redhat' menu, but it's running in the 
> >>background (there is one alsaplayer process).
> > 
> > You have to run it from a terminal as it is not smart enough to check
> > for a jack server (so by default it uses alsa and alsa is busy because
> > jack is using it). So try "alsplayer -o jack" from a terminal...
> 
> you are right, i don't know why i thought alsaplayer uses jack as 
> default. now it works (after i killed the alsaplayer in the background, 
> which hang jack without an error message and restarted jack. this linux 
> audio stuff is a mess ;-).

I agree. There is no way at this point to have entries in the menu
system and have the programs always "just work". A few of them do, but
most hit some snag... Most of the developers seem to test the program
from the command line and on their machine only :-) 

> > If you
> > are just using alsa you will also probably have problems with the RME
> > card because alsaplayer tries to use alsa parameters more suited to a
> > "consumer" card and does not adapt automatically to what the card can
> > do...
> 
> yes, i expirenced this problem in debian, too. alsa and pro soundcards 
> are amazingly user unfriendly setup in comparison to windows. as every 
> program with alsa support has different problems with my RME card, i 
> assume alsa as a not very well designed interface.

I'd say that it is well designed (not "very well", just "well" - there
are still some usability problems that have not been addressed). The
real problem is most programmers still assume that the world is just
"stereo 44.1K" and fail to really probe the alsa api for the
capabilities of the running environment and adjust to it. 

> p.s.: this is the first time i have a linux running jack in realtime 
> mode without crashing or xruns. thanks for this great addon distribution 
> for redhat.

Happy that it is working! There are still occassional xruns, it greatly
depends on the hardware you have... maybe you are lucky :-)

-- Fernando