[alsa-devel] ALSA application programming: route audio from one PCM to another

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Stefan Schoenleitner at 13/04/10 16:23 did gyre and
gimble:
> Hi,
> 
> I finally managed to write an ALSA I/O plugin that does what I want.
> The plugin supports both playback and capture.
> 
> Now I would like to write a simple audio application that takes audio
> samples
> 
> 	* from the microphone and plays it back on my plugin
> and
> 	* from the plugin (capture) and plays it back on the speakers
> 

This sounds like something that would be more appropriate for jack
http://jackaudio.org/

> Hence as long as the application is running, it should do the above.
> 
> * Is there a special ALSA way to route audio from one PCM to another ?
> 
> * If not, I suppose it would just work if I open the plugin PCM and the
> hw PCM at the same time and copy audio frames between them ?

Dealing with this can be quite complex, especially if the pcms are
clocked of different sources, you have to deal with a degree of
resampling to ensure that clock skew doesn't get out of control.

The module-loopback plugin in PulseAudio does a similar thing (routes
audio from a source to a sink) and as such has to deal with these clock
skew problems.

Col



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Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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