Re: What is the current status of the alsa sound server (signal polling)?

[Paul Davis <pbd@op.net>]

>you (or anyone else regarding asoundrc file), as well as additional info
>regrading polling abilities with the soundcards that have lousy drivers
>due to lack of documentation and/or questionable hardware and are
>therefore unable to provide me with the hardware mixing.

the term "polling" in not very useful here. all ALSA supported
hardware can be "polled" in the sense that a program can stop and wait
for it to be ready to read or write from. no hardware support over and
above the minimum necessary for basic audio i/o is necessary for this.

i think you're describing something that is generally known as
"multi-open", in which the hardware supports multiple independent (but
generally synchronous) streams of audio data to be possible, and each
process that opens the device gets a new stream. the streams are mixed
in hardware before being delivered to the physical outputs.

i am not sure how "polling" (of any kind) relates to this. care to explain?

--p