Writing Audio-Capable Applications on Linux

Last week, I attended the Linux Plumber's Conference, a funny-sounding but very important conference.  My wife can't get the image of Mario and Luigi out of her head, but "plumbing" in this case concerns the flow of data between core parts of the Linux system, not the flow of water.

One of the important mini-conferences held there was the Audio Conference, run by Lennart Poettering.  A good portion of the miniconf was spent discussing good end-developer APIs for sound on Linux, or (more accurately) the lack thereof.  Lennart talked about his ideas, but was intentionally vague about many of them, promising to follow up later with some documentation.

And he has made good on his promise, with a series of posts on the subject.  First:

At the Audio MC at the Linux Plumbers Conference one thing became very clear: it is very difficult for programmers to figure out which audio API to use for which purpose and which API not to use when doing audio programming on Linux. So here's my try to guide you through this jungle...

Second:

As kind of a followup to my Guide to Linux Sound APIs here're some pretty graphics I just drew. (At least "pretty" to the degree of my limited drawing abilities). It's a block diagram depicting the Linux audio stack.

A third post deals with the net.buzz surrounding the other two, makes a few corrections, and corrects some misperceptions.

If you've been confused about how to do sound in your Linux app, this post series is the short introduction you've been looking for.