I notice that Craig discusses these a bit on his latest blog at: http://craig.dubculture.co.nz/blog/2006/07/20/audio-on-ubuntu/ Craig - can you (or anyone else?) explain to me how Jack fits into all of this? Jack is mentioned at: http://jackit.sourceforge.net/docs/faq.php http://jackaudio.org/ I've seen quite a bit of mention of Jack around the place (as well as GStreamer) and haven't noticed PulseAudio much at all. It seems clear that OSS is going away and what Craig says about ESD makes sense as well... Now Alsa is at the kernel level for devices and doesn't seem to face any real competition. How do the other bits fit togther though? Ian (trying to stimulate some discussion - I could read this all up myself but it'd be boring..) -- Ian McDonald Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 Blog: http://imcdnzl.blogspot.com WAND Network Research Group Department of Computer Science University of Waikato New Zealand