[Portaudio] Re: portaudio in Debian, license updates?

[Robert McGwier]

Let me say as a long time member of this list and user of Portaudio and 
its proponent in many projects,  there was a period of a year where this 
project was a big time user of Ambien.  It was asleep for the most 
part.  A few folks came along and woke it up.


Flex Radio depends heavily on PortAudio in its commercial offerings.  I 
shudder to think what would have been done without it.  While the 
support for WDM-KS is not complete,  Flex Radio contributed back the 
WDM-KS driver in a usable state.  It has instabilities but it should be 
possible to finish from there.  I proposed its use for this commercial 
offering and Eric Wachsmann of Flex has done a great job with using, 
adding, and giving back the WDM-KS code to that which was in a stale and 
unusable state for a long time.

Arve Knudsen has almost single handedly changed my view of PortAudio for 
Linux.

I added PortAudio support for the Linux version of WSJT:

http://pulsar.princeton.edu/~joe/K1JT/index.htm

and helped it become an open source project supported on berlios.  This 
support includes support for ALSA,  OSS, and Jack.  It is an invaluable 
tool in making this python, C, Fortran project a cross platform 
offering.  Essentially the same code runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, and 
soon on Mac because of PortAudio.

I have constructed a module for GnuRadio to support PortAudio because of 
my experiences in support of WSJT.  I hope that comes together in the 
next couple of weeks:

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/  and http://comsec.com/wiki

and  intend to add the same kind of PortAudio support for the DSP which 
underlies the Flex Radio SDR in this project:

http://dttsp.sourceforge.net

We are doing this because of the RECENT forward motion in the support of 
the *nix, MacIntosh computers and Coreaudio.

On the Linux offerings,  I have seen none of the instability you 
mention.  I have used it on jack, alsa, and oss with great success.

As a regular user of Audacity,  I would view it as a real turn off if 
PortAudio support was deprecated in Audacity.  It is my opinion that 
while development on PortAudio has proceeded in fits and starts,  it has 
proceeded and with a bit more help, could easily congeal to a nice 
form.  We desperately need a cross platform audio API like this and 
RtAudio is not it.  It is my view IMNSHO that a better thing would be 
for Audacity and other developers to stop whining and start helping.  I 
would strongly support a Debian compatible license but Ross and PA are 
going to have a heck of a time tracking down all developers and getting 
the signed pieces of paper needed.

KEEP PA IN AUDACITY.

Bob



Ross Bencina wrote:
> Hi Guys
>
> I'm the dev lead for PortAudio.
>
> Matt Brubeck wrote:
>> Junichi Uekawa wrote:
>>>>> Things like portaudio and MIDIshare never really arrived. (OK, I'm
>>>>> exaggerating slightly - Doesn't Audacity use portaudio?)
>>>>
>>>> Audacity does use portaudio. Portaudio isn't dead and gone, but
>>>> development is barely progressing. With portaudio-v19 audacity can
>>>> use jack.
>
> There are numerous active commercial applications which depend on 
> PortAudio.. it is far from dead and gone. Quite naturally I believe it 
> to be a technically superior solution to RtAudio, primarily because 
> (last time I checked) RtAudio does not attempt to solve many of the 
> technical problems which PortAudio does.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Ross.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Portaudio at techweb.rfa.org
> http://techweb.rfa.org/mailman/listinfo/portaudio
>


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