The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI functionality to the Linux operating system.
The ALSA drivers are in the mainline Linux kernel since 2.6 release.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Efficient support for all types of audio interfaces, from consumer sound cards to professional multichannel audio interfaces.
- Fully modularized sound drivers.
- SMP and thread-safe design.
- User space library (alsa-lib) to simplify application programming and provide higher level functionality.
- Support for the older Open Sound System (OSS) API, providing binary compatibility for most OSS programs.
Website: www.alsa-project.org
Support:
Developer: ALSA team
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
ALSA is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Audio Systems | |
|---|---|
| PulseAudio | Integral part of all relevant modern Linux distributions |
| PipeWire | Low-latency, graph based processing engine on top of audio and video devices |
| MPD | Flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music |
| JACK | Professional low-latency sound server API and pair of daemon implementations |
| ALSA | Advanced Linux Sound Architecture |
| sndio | Small audio and MIDI framework |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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