In any case, AF should be easy to port to Linux. It can use a /dev/audio
interface, though this is not ideal.
In my (informed) opinion, both NAS and AF have problems that need to
be worked on (though they are good starts).
I'd personally start with AF, but then again, I'm biased (as one of AF's
authors). The fundamental features of AF that are very good are:
1) very low latency is possible; if an output device hasn't played
the sample yet, you can still change it. This is vital for both
gaming and teleconferencing; it is hard to retrofit into NAS,
which is why I'd start with AF.
2) explict control over time (you can mix samples at a sample
resolution).
The not so good parts of AF are:
1) no way to store sound snippets at the server (pretty trivial to add)
2) single mix buffer, which complicates unplaying sounds and makes
applications that may need to do so more complicated (this is an
artifact of the era in which AF was written, where memory was
much more expensive. This would be a moderate amout of work to
redo the server for; my guess is, if I had a month free, which I don't,
I could redo the server to present multiple output rings.
3) basic telephony support.
In any case, if people want to pick up AF and run with it, I'd be happy
to provide some pointers.
- Jim Gettys
-- Jim Gettys Industry Standards and Consortia Compaq Computer Corporation Visting Scientist, World Wide Web Consortium, M.I.T. http://www.w3.org/People/Gettys/ jg@w3.org, jg@pa.dec.com
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