libao 0.8.6 review

Libao is a cross-platform audio library that allows programs to output audio using a simple API on a wide variety of platforms. Li

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 378K Developer: Stan Seibert

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Libao is a cross-platform audio library that allows programs to output audio using a simple API on a wide variety of platforms.

Libao began life as cross-platform audio library inside of ac3dec, an AC3 decoder by Aaron Holtzman that is part of the LiViD project. When ogg123 (part of the command line vorbis tools) needed a way to play audio on multiple operating systems, someone on the vorbis-dev mailing list suggested the libao library as a possible way to add cross-platform support to ogg123. Stan Seibert downloaded the libao library, severely
hacked it up in order to make the build process simpler and support multiple live-playback devices. (The original code allowed one live playback driver, the wav driver, and a null driver to be compiled into the library.) Jack Moffitt got it supporting dynamically loaded plugins so that binary versions of libao could be provided.

Here are some key features of "libao":
Null output (handy for testing without a sound device)
WAV files
AU files
OSS (Open Sound System, used on Linux and FreeBSD
ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
polypaudio (next generation GNOME sound server)
esd (EsounD or Enlightened Sound Daemon)
AIX
Sun/NetBSD/OpenBSD
IRIX
NAS (Network Audio Ser

What's New in This Release:
New Polypaudio driver (libao-polyp 0.4) contributed by Lennart Poettering
Use esd_close() in the esd driver
Broaden sample rate tolerance in the OSS driver for nForce compatibility