[alsa-devel] Keyclick latency

[Clemens Ladisch]

Marc-André Hébert wrote:
> I am working on an embedded device which does audio playback. Now when
> the user presses a key, we want to play a tone to provide a keyclick
> feedback to the user.
> 
> What we always did (we were using OSS before) was pretty much the
> simplest thing possible which is for the application to:
> -stop sending playback samples
> -send the keyclick samples
> -resume sending the playback samples
> 
> With our new hardware this approach does not produce good results
> because of the size of the device's ringbuffer. The larger buffer
> introduces a significant latency issue for the user feedback. Reducing
> the ring buffer size is not a viable option to ensure no underruns are
> generated on the system.
> [...]
> Would there be a simpler approach? Something like pausing
> the stream or reading the contents of the ringbuffer before dropping.

Depending on what plugins sits between your application and the
hardware, your ALSA device might support snd_pcm_rewind()/
snd_pcm_forward().  Please note that rewinding will increase the
chance of an underrun (just like a smaller buffer), so you might want
to disable xrun detection (which means that instead of stopping, the
old buffer data will be played in place of the beginning of the click).


Regards,
Clemens