Richard Dobson wrote:

> The point being that DirectX is a hardware-independent way of addressing the
> hardware directly. It was never needed until PC's got fast enough to do complex
> audio i/o in real-time. Microsoft has simply introduced a new solution to a new
> requirement.

AFAIK Linux has never had any particular problems in this area! Although
I have yet to actually get my soundcard working on Linux :(

> It is also sometimes forgotten that that the PC was, and still is, primarily a
> general-purpose computer (albeit highly expandable and customizable); such a
> machine will probably ~always~ have limitations when being pushed to do
> zero-latency audio. That is not Microsoft's fault either.

However we are talking about CSound here which is merely outputting bits
to a D/A convertor. Vaz exhibited smaller delays when using the ASCII
keyboard or even it's own sequencer under DirectX, so it isn't merely a
MIDI
problem. Every OS I have ever programmed for has some standard method
of accessing sound output directly, which still works interchangeably
with different soundcards. So I contest that DirectX is simply allowing
people to do on Windows what they've been doing for years on other
platforms. But this doesn't matter at all really! My main concern was
that maybe by using another platform I'd be losing out on some
performance
hike that DirectX miraculously enables.

Of course your point about latency applies to any "realtime"
application,
there is always going to be some buffer somewhere which is written to
before it is read from.

Bye!