byuu's message board

I want to determine the best default driver.

ALSA: Linux only, allows turning synchronization off to run at uncapped speeds
OpenAL: works on all OSes, allows turning sync off to run at uncapped speeds
OSS: *nix only, forces audio sync on
PulseAudio: (hopefully) Linux only, forces audio sync on
libao: *nix only, forces audio sync on
None: not a damn one works :P

Really only the first two should be contenders, since running at >60fps is really important. But if both don't work at all, obviously you'll want to choose another.

Obviously you are aware of my issues with ALSA. OpenAL works perfectly.

PulseAudio, because it integrates so nicely with my Ubuntu desktop. Sure, it's a little laggy, but none of the other options seem detectably better.

Alsa gives me the best performance, followed by openal. Libao is 2 times slower than alsa. Pulseaudio has too much delay.

PulseAudio for me. If i set latency in bsnes to 20ms it's tolerable for me.

Actually, ALSA doesn't work for me with bsnes. It seems to work at first, but after a while bsnes locks up. This has been the case for a while now. On older versions of bsnes it would lock up after a few seconds. The last time I tested it took a little longer I think, but the problem remained.

I know this is probably because I use Ubuntu with PulseAudio and PulseAudio is apparently evil, but to its defense: I have no other audio problems whatsoever. Even other emulators that use ALSA (e.g. Gambatte) run perfectly and with low latency, so overall I'm happy with PulseAudio.

EDIT: Oh, OpenAL works for me too btw. It's a bit laggy, but only a tiny bit more so than the PulseAudio driver I think. I think I've tested the other drivers as well once, but I don't remember why I didn't choose those.

Oh, I remember the big issue with OpenAL ... play Super Power League 4. The voice in the opening loses all the echo with OpenAL. No idea what the heck is going on there. Compare it to ALSA and it should be obvious.

But yeah, that's two systems that are locking up with ALSA now. Something's quite wrong with the current driver :/

to those that have issues with ALSA, which soundcard are you using?

OSS.

OSS is usually the only audio driver I install on my Linux box so I guess it wins by default for me.

Good point, I should've mentioned that in my previous post.

At first I was using a Creative Soundblaster Live. A cheap version, I think it was called something like the "Live 1024". I'm quite sure I had the lock-up problem when I used this card. Then the Soundblaster Live broke, so I removed it and started using my motherboard's on-board audio. I'm actually not sure if I ever tested bsnes with this configuration. Then I got a separate media PC for in the living room, which also uses on-board audio. On this I again tested bsnes with ALSA, and it still locked up.

That's my recollection of it. byuu, if you need more info, about what on-board audio I used exactly or about your other bsnes audio drivers, let me know, I'd be glad to report about it.

I don't think I ever got around to reporting this as a bug, but I seem to recall Gambatte sounding horrible with PulseAudio, presumably because it was closing and re-opening the sound device several times a second, leading to horrible glitches and the UI being unresponsive for 50% of the time. It might have been my own crazy configuration, or it might have been a bug in the SVN trunk that's already been fixed by now. Next time I get the urge to play a GB game, I'll give it another shot.

this is an interesting question because i've always used alsa because i've never had any issues with it so i've never tried any of the other drivers.

intel g45
ICH10/ICH10R HDMA

I actually voted OpenAL, as it's what I was using at the time, but I recently gave OSS another go. I previously avoided the OSS driver due to it adding an unacceptable amount of overhead compared to OpenAL, but it seems the situation has actually be reversed now, and the OSS driver seems slightly faster. So now I'm using OSS, so one vote should really be moved from OpenAL to OSS.

yes a nice forum option is the ability to revise your poll choice. But we can keep score in our head, that would break the tie

4 for OSS,
3 for PulseAudio,
2 for OpenAL,
2 for ALSA, and
0 for libao

libao really does seem to be very unpopular. What's wrong with it? On my system, it does nothing (which I assume is due to the Ubuntu build only recognizing ALSA as a valid backend, I had a similar problem with PortAudio), but what about everyone else here? For the record, I'm still using OSS as my sound system (recently upgraded to 4.2-2000).