Re: why does sndio only support ALSA hardware outputs?

On Mon, Dec 23, 2024 at 10:20:25PM +0300, Паша Техник wrote:
> As i can see, sndio for alsa hard codes the hw: prefix when specifying
> the ALSA PCM for output. Are there any reasons for not allowing to use
> other types of PCMs?

There are multiple reasons for that.

Last time I checked, not all ALSA plugins worked with libsndio, so
enabling them didn't look trivial.

Furthermore, certain features of the basic ALSA plugins are covered by
sndiod, so I guess plugins other than "hw" are not needed that often,
which might explain why nobody did the job yet.

Finally, the purpose of sndio is to keep minimal the software layers
between programs and the audio hardware, so the whole plugin
architecture kinda defeats sndio purpose. On the other hand, adding
the missing features directly to sndiod allows non-Linux users to use
them.

> E.g. i want to boost my volume above 100% with
> softvol plugin. As i can see, sndio can't do that (it's ok), but it
> can't output to the softvol PCM either.
> 

<OT> Interresingly, there were recent discussions about this. No
promise, but this is likely to come sooner or later.

my 2 cents