On Sun, 2024-10-27 at 18:29 -0500, Seamus de Mora via Alsa-user wrote: > What role does 'alsa' play on my systems? Hi, in simple terms, it can be said that ALSA is responsible for the hardware level and provides the kernel modules/drivers. Pipewire is a soundserver that works on top of ALSA. I can't comment on pipewire, but some soundservers provide features, such as resampling or at least one other soundserver provides kind of a virtual patch bay for real-time audio applications, but it doesn't provide resampling. I can't comment much on the audio players mpg123 and cmus, but seemingly you can use cmus without the need to install a soundserver such as pipewire. Some GUI applications, at least audacity need mpg123. $ pacman -Si cmus | grep Optional Optional Deps : alsa-lib: for ALSA output plugin support You seemingly can use cmos by directly connecting to ALSA. Simplified summary 1. To use the Hardware you need the thing that handles the hardware level. It's ALSA. 2. A soundserver such as pipewire does provide "features" that aren't necessarily needed. 3. Apps not necessarily need a soundserver, some can use plain ALSA. IOW you need an audio app and ALSA, but not necessarily a soundserver. Some distros don't install apps such as audio players or web browsers at all. That one of your installs does default to cmus and another to mpg123 is comparable to distros that install different web browsers by default. Firefox, Chromium, Vivaldi, Falkon ... Some apps are based on other apps or at shared libraries. There are countless of possible combinations, but ALSA is the base that is quasi always needed. Regards, Ralf _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
