Hi,

First of all, I am fairly new to this list, as well as sound development. So if this list is the wrong place for this question, it would be nice if you could point me in the right direction.

I am trying to use ALSA in my OCaml [1] programms. As far as I could see there are no well documented bindings to ALSA for this language, so I am stuck with writing my own bindings. I have gotten to the point where I can open a pcm device with a minimal configuration space on my desktop as well as on my laptop. However I am not sure which transfer mode to use, since it is hard to see for me, what the advantages and disadvantages would be. Here is what I have found out so far.

1. Asynchronous callback: This method seems to be the best explained by all the tutorials I could find, so I am guessing this is the best choice for audio applications. However for my purpose this seems hard to do, since the thread which contains the callback must never enter the OCaml side of the wrapper. This constraint is due to the OCaml garbage collector, which AFAIK would be messed up severely. So to use this method I would have to write an extra buffer in the C side, to which I write the data from OCaml. Depending on the way this buffer is set up -- I was thinking of using a linked list to contain all the single packets -- I would have to keep track what part of the usage of this buffer to be able to synchronise anything to the sound. Not the best choice I as far as I can see.

2. read/write: So far this seems the best choice. This way I could probably rewrite the asynchronous callback method on the OCaml side. For this however I would have to figure out after each polling, how much data can be written. I had a look at the API documentation and it seems ALSA provides function to get this information. However when I had a look at the example sine-wave generator [2], those functions were only used by the mmap method. So the question would be if this information could still be provided when using the read/write method.

3. mmap: During the research I did for this project I found some posts on the portaudio list, that said this method could not be used with all soundcards. Also I would have to figure out if the memory layout of the data passed from the OCaml side is at all compatible to this method. If it is incompatible the use of mmap does not seem to make sense at all.

So far this are the points I have gathered to help me make a choice. As you can see I already have a clear preference, but at this point I am still not quite sure. I also found some links that hinted at other issues that would have to be taken into consideration. For example I found some concerns about differences in lattency between these three methods.

So what is your opinion on this. Do you think reintroducing the async. callback on the OCaml side would be a good idea, or would you rather use the second buffer that is accesible from the OCaml side. As I said, I haven't done any real sound development, so I am really new to this.

Thanks for your help, Till

[1] OCaml is a functional language developed by Inria. http://caml.inria.fr/ [2] http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/_2test_2pcm_8c-example.html