Ray Cromwell writes:
The problem is, what will be done for the Unix users? A standard audio API is sorely missing in the unix world (NetWork Audio System and AudioFile aren't solutions)
It depends on what you mean by an API. If you are just talking about driver interfacing there are de facto standards at this point -- basically everyone has been adopting the sun /dev/audio ioctls.
That's too low-level to deal with the proliferation of PC sound systems, especially since even non-intel workstations are adopting PCi buses. If I recall, /dev/audio relies on u-law/a-law encoding. That's only one component of a higher level audio system. That's like having a /dev/svga but no Motif library. Furthermore, a /dev/audio like interface doesn't admit good hardware acceleration, such as if you had to play an MPEG layerIII audio, but your sound card had a DSP. -Ray