SDL issue with DirectSound

Are there any plans to fix the issue of DirectSound audio through SDL using a primary
directsound buffer and not a secondary directsound buffer ? this causes problems on certain
sound cards, which work fine if output is changed to waveout.
The problem was noticed during the development of Exult, some examples of sound cards which
have problems:
Any Aureal Vortex 2 based sound card (Maybe Vortex 1 and Advantage based sound cards too),
sound fails to play at all.
Any Analog Devices chipset using SoundMax drivers, MIDI playback only works when program is
in background if SDL is used for audio.

I’m just a user myself but was hoping someone might be able to fix it in SDL so individual
programs don’t need to provide a work around to use waveout instead.

Are there any plans to fix the issue of DirectSound audio through SDL using a primary directsound buffer and not a secondary directsound buffer ?

What exactly is the problem? SDL is set up to use the primary sound buffer
if possible, and if not, fall back to a secondary buffer. Do the Aureal
cards just not generate sound when the primary buffer is used?

Out of curiousity, what kind of latency do you see with and without using
the primary sound buffer on those cards?

See ya,
-Sam Lantinga, Software Engineer, Blizzard Entertainment

Are there any plans to fix the issue of DirectSound audio through SDL using a primary
directsound buffer and not a secondary directsound buffer ?

What exactly is the problem? SDL is set up to use the primary sound buffer
if possible, and if not, fall back to a secondary buffer. Do the Aureal
cards just not generate sound when the primary buffer is used?

I can’t check on the Vortex 2 based sound card anymore since the problem only occured under
Windows 9x/ME and I have moved onto Windows XP. Checking the logs at the time shows the
sound card reported all streams were in use and there was a brief repeated sound when Exult
was left in the background.
The only case I can still test out is the one with the SoundMax drivers on Analog Device
AD1881A chipset, where windows MIDI output only plays if program is in the background if
SDL audio is been used at the same time (Since it occurs in Windows XP too).

Out of curiousity, what kind of latency do you see with and without using
the primary sound buffer on those cards?

I notice no difference in sound delay when using waveout myself, but the two main SDL
programs I use (Exult and scummvm) don’t seem to use that much CPU at least on this system.
I will ask Exult developer who worked around the problem to provide more technical details
about the problem so I can pass them along to you.From: slouken@libsdl.org (slouken)