How does Polypaudio compare with ESOUND/aRts/NAS?
Polypaudio is sound daemon similar to ESOUND and NAS, but much more powerful. aRts is a realtime-synthesizer-cum-sound-server, i.e. it does much more than Polypaudio. However, I believe that Polypaudio does what it does much better than any other free sound server.
What about ESOUND compatibility?
Polypaudio is a drop in replacement for ESOUND. That means: you can load a esound compatibility module which implements an ESOUND compatible protocol which allows you to use most of the classic ESOUND compatible programs (including the command line programs like esdcat).
Is Polypaudio a GNOME program?
No, Polypaudio has no dependency on GNOME/GTK/GLIB. All it requires is a UNIX-like operating system and very few dependency libraries. However, the accompanying GUI tools are writen with gtkmm, i.e. require both GLIB and GTK.
Can I integrate Polypaudio in my GLIB/GTK/GNOME application?
Yes! Polypaudio comes with a GLIB main loop adapter. You can embed both the client library and the daemon (!) into your GLIB based application.
Can I integrate Polypaudio in my Qt/KDE application?
Yes! Polypaudio uses a main loop abstraction layer that allows you to integrate Polypaudio in any program that supports main loops. Unfortunately there is no adapter for Qt publicly available yet.
I want to write a new driver for Polypaudio, are there any docs?
Currently, only the client API is documented with doxygen. Read the source and base your work on a simple module like module-pipe-sink.
What about compatibility with NAS?
Is not available (yet?). It is doable, but noone has implemented it yet.
What about compatibility with aRts?
Is not available. Since aRts is as synthesizer application you'd have to reimplement very much code for Polypaudio. It should be easy to implement limited support for libartsc based applications. Noone has done this yet. It is probably a better idea to run arts on top of Polypaudio (through a polypaudio driver for aRts, which nobody has written yet). Another solution would be to embed Polypaudio in the aRts process.
I often hear noises when playing back with Polypaudio, what can I do?
There are to possible solutions: either make the polypaudio binary SUID root (chmod u+s /usr/bin/polypaudio) and run it with argument -r or increase the fragment sizes of the audio drivers. The former will allow Polypaudio to activate SCHED_FIFO high priority scheduling (root rights are dropped immediately after this).