# Coreaudio, asio, alsa, jack



## JEPA (May 9, 2019)

just for the record... Justin Frankel's opinion:

https://www.askjf.com

*Question:*_ Is there, in your opinion, a clearly better driver/sysyem between ASIO, ALSA and CoreAudio? Why do you think that Microsoft never developed a built-in low-latency universal driver if even Linux has one?_
Asked by Joan (37.159.65.x) on May 2 2019, 11:55pm
Reply on May 3 2019, 3:28am:


Hmm they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some thoughts:
CoreAudio: slightly crufty but relatively decent API. Multiple clients (awesome!), floating point, aggregate devices, overall winner IMO.
ASIO: pretty easy API, but missing functionality (nobody seems to implement underrun indicators???), and most drivers don't support multiple clients/routing.
ALSA: moderately clean API, but hard to get right across various drivers, also programmer responsible for scheduling. No multiple-client support.
JACK: probably the best API of all worlds, but configuring it is still a pain


----------



## wst3 (May 10, 2019)

I think that's pretty darned accurate and complete. As a Windoze user I have long lamented the lack of something like CoreAudio - and I really do not understand why it does not exist. As the original question points out, even Linux has a unified audio system - although I have no desire to ever program for it, and I don't enjoy setting it up.

There was a time, many years ago, when MS hired an audio guru specifically to address this. That was before ASIO surfaced. Why they never allowed him to do his thing is beyond me.

And Justin did leave one OS out - BeOS was designed from the ground up to be a multimedia operating system. Sadly it never got off the ground (I'm pretty sure I still have the floppies somewhere.)

For the really adventurous (read there are no solid apps) check out Haiku-os.org. Development seems to have ground to a halt, but while it was being actively developed it was quite good.


----------



## wst3 (May 10, 2019)

OOPS! I lied! Fake News!!!!

It appears that Haiku is still quite active. I based my comment above on zero activity on the list server, what I did not realize is that I was somehow unsubscribed. I've fixed that, and downloaded the current beta...


----------

