I'm just thinking of all the disparate use cases for Linux audio, all the disparate types of inputs/outputs, complex device types involved, etc.
But then I think about pro-audio:
* gotta go fast
* devices don't suddenly appear and disappear after boot
* hey Paul Davis-- isn't the current consensus that people just wanna run a single pro-audio software environment and run anything else they need as plugins within that environment? (As opposed to running a bazillion different applications and gluing them together with Jack?)
So for pro-audio, rather than dev'ing more generic solutions to rule all the generic solutions (and hoping pro-audio still fits one of the generic-inside-generic nestings), wouldn't time be better spent creating a dead simple round-trip audio latency test GUI (and/or API), picking a reference distro, testing various alsa configurations to measure which one is most reliable at the lowest latency, and publishing the results?
Perhaps start with most popular high-end devices, then work your way down from there...
Can't pro audio also mean plugging in your laptop at a nightclub and performing? Why is pro audio limited to things as unchanging as a permanent recording studio? Someone making tunes on their laptop in their bedroom can also require 'pro audio'.
But there's pro audio in a studio, and then there's people like me who occassionally record stuff on our normal desktop systems and find it annoying to remember / lookup how to switch audio stacks.
But then I think about pro-audio:
* gotta go fast
* devices don't suddenly appear and disappear after boot
* hey Paul Davis-- isn't the current consensus that people just wanna run a single pro-audio software environment and run anything else they need as plugins within that environment? (As opposed to running a bazillion different applications and gluing them together with Jack?)
So for pro-audio, rather than dev'ing more generic solutions to rule all the generic solutions (and hoping pro-audio still fits one of the generic-inside-generic nestings), wouldn't time be better spent creating a dead simple round-trip audio latency test GUI (and/or API), picking a reference distro, testing various alsa configurations to measure which one is most reliable at the lowest latency, and publishing the results?
Perhaps start with most popular high-end devices, then work your way down from there...
Or has someone done this already?