# Making Sense of The Audio Stack On Unix



## drhowarddrfine (Feb 9, 2021)

Venam's Blog


> Anybody who claims one system offers better audio “quality” is just plain wrong and base their assumption on something non-scientifically proven.
> 
> All the low-level stacks are relatively the same speed when running in bit-perfect mode. The big differences between all that we’ve seen relates to the driver support, the ease of use, the desktop integration, and the buffer/latency management.
> Some systems are targeted at end users and others at audio engineers.





> the BSD stack is definitely the simplest, even though there are discrepancies between the lowest layers and lack of driver support, sndio makes it a breeze.


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## GoNeFast_01 (Feb 14, 2021)

Lots of information in there... Thank you for sharing always wanted to know what happens with the audio, I pray that sndio get me through ... In my setup, I install PulseAudio or ALSA and lose functionality with my headset or other devices, documentation is also very thick on some of these scripts!!! Anyways a good article to dive into when wanting to know about audio. Great read!!


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## sidetone (Feb 15, 2021)

When I tried to play Flac24 (higher than CD quality audio) on Windows, it sounded worse than AM radio. Windows didn't have a flac player, and it had to be downloaded from a 3rd party.

On FreeBSD, provided you have a 24 bit sound card, flac24 sounds great. It even sounds good on a 16 bit sound card. The 16 bit sound card obviously didn't have the high and low range that a 24 bit sound card had. It may have been cd quality or slightly better though. This part on a 16 bit sound card may have been placebo effect, but flac24 audio sounded like it had more bits (sound) per second.

If an OS doesn't play to the fullest that the card and file quality provide, then sound on it is substandard.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Feb 15, 2021)

sidetone said:


> When I tried to play Flac24 (higher than CD quality audio) on Windows, it sounded worse than AM radio. Windows didn't have a flac player, and it had to be downloaded from a 3rd party.
> 
> On FreeBSD, provided you have a 24 bit sound card, flac24 sounds great. It even sounds good on a 16 bit sound card. The 16 bit sound card obviously didn't have the high and low range that a 24 bit sound card had. It may have been cd quality or slightly better though. This part on a 16 bit sound card may have been placebo effect, but flac24 audio sounded like it had more bits (sound) per second.
> 
> If an OS doesn't play to the fullest that the card and file quality provide, then sound on it is substandard.


Don't blame Windows yet. On this OS, everything is available but not available by default. Everything is needed to be downloaded and installed yourself. I think you need new version of audio driver (always Realtek High Definition on my system) and a 3rd media player. If one media player doesn't work for you, try another. There are plenty of them, free or even open source. The quality varied between them. So don't blame Windows itself yet!


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## sidetone (Feb 15, 2021)

IIRC it was songbird or something like that. That was about 8 years ago. I'm happy with the sound system on FreeBSD, I'm not going to get a copy of Windows to try it out again. Now that they make you log in online, to allow access into your Windows computer.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Feb 15, 2021)

sidetone said:


> IIRC it was songbird or something like that. That was about 8 years ago. I'm happy with the sound system on FreeBSD, I'm not going to get a copy of Windows to try it out again. Now that they make you log in online, to allow access into your Windows computer.


This is a myth. You could have local account on Windows 10. MS account is not a mandatory requirement.

BTW, I have not run any version of Windows for a long time, too.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Feb 15, 2021)

I rated sound quality on Unix system according to my experience:

OpenBSD > FreeBSD > DragonflyBSD > Linux > NetBSD > OpenIndiana


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## sidetone (Feb 15, 2021)

failure said:


> This is a myth. You could have local account on Windows 10. M$ account is not a mandatory requirement.
> 
> BTW, I have not run any version of Windows for a long time, too.


That was my experience with it. The sound quality was that bad when using Songbird music application. It was worse than AM radio. I'm not sure, but one version of Windows required me to log on online to access it.


failure said:


> I rated sound quality on Unix system according to my experience:
> 
> OpenBSD > FreeBSD > DragonflyBSD > Linux > NetBSD > OpenIndiana


I hear OpenBSD has a great sound system. If Sndio is limited to 16 bit PCM, then, it can't be better than FreeBSD's. The Sndio on FreeBSD is limited to 16 bit, compared to OSS on FreeBSD which allows 24 bit PCM. Now, that's Sndio on FreeBSD, it has to be known from OpenBSD's source code if their Sndio is 24 bit PCM. Or if another OpenBSD sound architecture is 24 bit PCM.


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## zirias@ (Feb 15, 2021)

sidetone said:


> I'm not sure, but one version of Windows required me to log on online to access it.


It most certainly didn't. The "client" edition (aka Windows-10) nowadays tries to push you into using online accounts (Microsoft account or an Azure AD), but you can still just opt for a local account and maybe add the machine to an on-premise AD. But maybe this was about "activation"? They got rid of these product keys, instead you CAN add your license to your MS account, so when installing it on a different machine, you might be required to log in for activation. If you didn't do it, you probably have to contact support :/

As for audio quality: My crappy onboard soundchip on a very old board indeed sounds better on FreeBSD than it did on Linux (and I never had Windows on THAT machine). But I'm pretty sure the OP is correct and this is due to a driver better suited for my chip. Still, I love the simplicity on FreeBSD, there's nothing better than a classic /dev/dsp device.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Feb 17, 2021)

sidetone said:


> I hear OpenBSD has a great sound system. If Sndio is limited to 16 bit PCM, then, it can't be better than FreeBSD's. The Sndio on FreeBSD is limited to 16 bit, compared to OSS on FreeBSD which allows 24 bit PCM. Now, that's Sndio on FreeBSD, it has to be known from OpenBSD's source code if their Sndio is 24 bit PCM. Or if another OpenBSD sound architecture is 24 bit PCM.


The song sounds more beautiful on OpenBSD but it's louder on FreeBSD. The volume is loudest on FreeBSD/DragonflyBSD.


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## sidetone (Feb 17, 2021)

failure said:


> The song sounds more beautiful on OpenBSD but it's louder on FreeBSD. The volume is loudest on FreeBSD/DragonflyBSD.


What's the status of 24 bit PCM audio on OpenBSD for Sndio or otherwise?

There's no way a sound can be better for playing higher than CD audio, if it isn't capable of playing higher than 16 bit PCM. The effects around the sound or filtering can be different, or it can be how cassette tapes can sound better than CD, despite being of lower fidelity.


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