Re: [linux-audio-dev] Channels and best practice

On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 at 07:24 -0500, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-11-15 at 11:58 +0000, James McDermott wrote:
> > > What are your thoughts? What is best practice on multichannel audio, or
> > > is it always application-specific?
> >
> > According to my experience and understanding:
> >
> > -non-interleaved (multiple channels in separate arrays) is a bit
> > easier to code, but
> > -interleaved could give better performance (because the data you need
> > "now" is all close together in memory).
> > -libsndfile uses interleaved.
> > -plugins (DSSI, LADSPA) use separate arrays.
>
> it depends whether playback + recording is the only goal, or editing is
> in the potential workflow. editing interleaved data, especially if there
> are unrelated signals in different channels that will be treated
> differently, is really, really hard. if all you do is playback and
> record, interleaved is marginally more efficient.

So marginally more efficient vs. really really hard, it sounds like for
a general-purpose lib you'd want seperate channels, eh?

-- 
Hans Fugal ; http://hans.fugal.net
 
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the 
right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
    -- Johann Sebastian Bach