Daniel> That and the fact that Esd supports software mixing of Daniel> different audio streams[1] simultaneously, such that Daniel> XEmacs and my MP3 player can both produce sound at the Daniel> same time through it. Yes, this is evidently the whole purpose for ESD. That and to provide as trivial an interface as possible, so that pretty much anything can be converted to ESD (hey, maybe we should just tack on an ESD device to NAS). Daniel> If I am not mistaken (and the documentation indicates that Daniel> I am not), this is not a feature of the NAS server I have Daniel> here... Huh? What documentation are you looking at? NAS allows flexible mixing of an arbitrary number of channels in all sorts of ways; I've never had a problem sending multiple streams through NAS. Maybe I've just been hearing things.... ;-) The Network Audio System service supports a variety of the common formats used to store sound data. Audio inputs and outputs can run at a any of a range of sampling rates. The audio server automatically converts all data to the designed format or rate. Look!> Streams of data from multiple inputs can be mixed together and directed to any attached output device. Sounds that are used many times can be stored in the server so that they do not need to be transmitted over the network each time they are played. Furthermore, inputs can be hooked directly to outputs (for example, a CD player can be con­ nected to a set of speakers) so that data can be played without requiring any client intervention or network traf­ fic. This mixing is done automatically. Gains for different devices can controlled using the auctl(1) tool. Daniel> Well, Esd isn't close to the standard of NAS, Daniel> technically. Software mixing and software support are Daniel> pretty good points though... NAS's support is poor by Linux standards, granted. That might have something to do with the fact that it tries to support something other than Linux, which ESD does not according to its home page, and that without autoconf. (Friends don't let friends use Imake....) -- University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091 _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."