Why should I use a sound server (esd / arts) ?

[ehud]

I'm using alsa as my sound system. I was wondering if there are any advantages of using a sound server. Alsa allows playing multiple sounds from different sources, so what do I get if I use a sound server ?

[agent_jdh]

ALSA only supports playing sounds simultaneously from multiple sources if the driver supports hardware mixing, or by using dmix, which doesn't always work.

If the ALSA driver for your sound card doesn't support hardware mixing, or the applications you're running don't work well with dmix, using a software mixer like esd or arts is a solution.
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[KiTaSuMbA]

Ok, this might be a little too opinionated from my side, but... NOTHING. I find the "sound server" idea a little too "unprofessional" for my likings.
Why's that? Because, almost invariably, sound daemons produce a nasty overhead, reduce the performance of multimedia applications that should enjoy an almost realtime environment, are incompatible among them causing apps to either work good on esd and gnome or arts and kde - or requiring double the effort from developers to make them work on both.
Alsa on the other hand provides only basic hardware support and not the other higher "layers" of sound processing. If you manage to bring more than one app on the output simultaneously, it's because your soundcard (i.e. the very hardware) can manage multiple "channels" and mix them down either by software or hardware methods.
What we need is a layer to manage the software - alsa interactions that is designed well enough to provide as less latency as possible (in a configurable manner) and that works independently of gnome, kde or whatever "integrated environment" you wish to use. A sound "daemon" has nothing to do with graphics except for the stuborness of competing devs.
The good news is that there is already a software that manages all of this pretty well: jackd. Although designed to cover a completely vacant position for pro sound applications, playing a role similar to the ASIO system for windows, I see no harm in using it for every-day desktop usage. Its configurability permits to set higher buffers that at the cost of latency (not so critical for desktop-type apps) offer "sound robustness" for the varying system load of a normal desktop box.
The bad news is that not many apps support connecting to a jackd server instead of directly to the sound drivers or the more common sound servers or at least support it reliably and with better (as should be expected) quality than the other solutions. Furthermore, there is still no easy way to control jackd through a GUI (qjackctl being a nice start but still only a start), permissions for users other than root can get chaotic and both the major DEs seem to ignore the effort (although the KDE devs to their praise have admitted the intollerable mess arts has come to be).

After this horrible rant, my advice is: if you don't need them, don't use them! Set your USE flags at "-arts -esd" and get a lighter system. If you want to do fancy stuff, try out jackd but prepare yourself for quite some reading and testing. If you just got caught in the middle, take a deep breath and go on with it as "necessary evil".
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[ehud]

Thanks for the insights. Currently I do not use esd nor arts and alsa alone seems to work fine.

[agent_jdh]

[DittoBox]

[agent_jdh]

[DittoBox]

[randabis]

I really wish there was a polypaudio ebuild out there. Out of all the sound servers I find it to be the best, and it's a direct dropin replacement to esd so the install isn't hard.

[zinion]

I think this sound thing is a big advantage from windows over Linux. I HATE IT SO MUCH!

I only have trouble with it....

Currently I use ESD because I get a crash when choosing ALSA in KDE-Soundsystem. But then - trouble with TS...

If I use OSS - no sound in KDE.

Only ESD works.

ANY other applications work fine...

I simply hate this shit.
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[songpenguin]

IMHO ALSA is a big improvement over Kmix (the windows sound mixer). For one thing, ALSA does not force you to use dmix. With dmix you can force a bitrate, or override it easily for select programs. Nope, it's all ALSA for me. As for a Sound Daemon. Some WM's (KDE) use the sound daemon to play "system" sounds. But for music and such, avoid them, you want as little processing done to your music as possible.

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Songpenguin
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