Library

This is the complete index of resources on this site. The individual section pages organize material by topic, but the library brings everything together in one place so you can survey the full scope of what is here without navigating through multiple section hierarchies. The site covers Linux audio from several directions: technical reference for the tools and practices that make Linux audio systems work well, community history drawn from the Linux Audio Developers mailing list and the events that shaped the field, benchmark and measurement resources for evaluating system performance, and experimental work on audio synthesis and workflow. Below I walk through each section with a note on what it contains and who benefits most from it.

Audio Quality

The audio quality section covers the signal side of Linux audio: dynamic range, noise floor, frequency response, the effect of sample rate conversion on signal integrity, and the ways that driver-level processing can introduce artifacts into an otherwise clean signal chain. This is the reference for anyone doing recording, mixing, or mastering work on Linux where the quality of the captured or processed signal matters as much as the timing behavior of the system.

Audio quality measurement on Linux has historically been underserved relative to latency measurement. The community put significant effort into characterizing and improving latency, which was the obvious barrier to real-time performance work, and quality measurement received less systematic attention. The resources in this section address that gap, covering both measurement methodology and the specific signal path decisions that affect output quality.

Linux Audio Developers and Users (LAD)

The LAD community hub is the central section for mailing list resources, subscription guides, community history, and the reference material that emerged from years of LAD discussion. The Linux Audio Developers mailing list was the primary coordination point for the developers who built ALSA, JACK, LADSPA, and the surrounding infrastructure. The resources here document what that community produced, how to engage with it, and how to find the knowledge that accumulated in list archives and community-maintained reference pages.

Within the LAD section, the latency resources page is particularly comprehensive: years of accumulated knowledge on PREEMPT_RT, IRQ tuning, buffer sizing, and hardware-specific findings. The event archives document the in-person gatherings where significant technical discussions happened. The subscription and list guides help newcomers understand the structure of the Linux audio mailing list ecosystem.

Latency Reference

The latency hub is the top-level reference on scheduling latency for audio work. It covers the fundamentals -- what scheduling latency is, why worst-case behavior matters more than the average, and how kernel configuration choices affect the distribution of latency values. This is the conceptual foundation for understanding what the benchmark tools measure and what the measurement results mean.

Benchmark Tools

The benchmarks hub organizes all measurement tools and resources on the site. Two specific tools are available for download and use:

HDRBench -- a high dynamic range histogram tool for characterizing the statistical distribution of scheduling latency. Uses log-scale bucketing to preserve resolution across the full range of observed values, making the tail of the distribution -- the part that governs audio system reliability -- as legible as the peak.
Latency Graph -- a temporal visualization tool that plots latency measurements against time, revealing periodic patterns, correlating spikes with system events, and showing how latency behavior changes across a measurement session.

Both tools work with cyclictest trace data and are most informative when used together. HDRBench answers "what is the shape of the distribution." Latency Graph answers "when did the outliers happen." Together they provide a complete picture of system behavior.

Events and Community History

The events section covers the in-person Linux audio community gatherings from 2003 to 2005: LinuxTag 2003, the ZKM Karlsruhe meetings of 2003 and 2004, and the 2005 ZKM session. These events were where significant technical decisions were made face to face, where developers who had been collaborating online met in person, and where the direction of projects like JACK and ALSA was shaped through direct discussion. The documentation here includes session notes, participant lists, and reference material from the gatherings.

Experimental and Synthesis Work

The Maia section covers experimental audio work including the Audiality synthesis engine. Audiality is a lightweight, real-time capable audio synthesis engine designed for low overhead and flexible control. The notes on this site cover engine architecture, the synthesis model, the scripting interface for parameter control, and the integration patterns relevant to Linux audio workflows. This material is aimed at audio programmers and experimenters rather than end users.

Notes

The notes section is where longer-form writing appears: analysis, perspective, and the kind of context-setting that does not fit neatly into a reference page. Notes cover topics across the full scope of the site -- latency and quality measurement, community history, synthesis work, and the broader landscape of Linux audio development. If you are trying to understand not just what something is but why it matters and how it connects to the rest of the field, the notes section is where to look.

Using the Library

The resources here span a range from practical reference (the benchmark tools, the latency tuning guide, the subscription guides) to historical documentation (the event coverage, the mailing list archives) to experimental notes (the synthesis work, the audio quality research). Some sections are densely cross-referenced because the topics genuinely overlap: you cannot understand HDRBench without understanding what scheduling latency is, and you cannot interpret a latency trace without knowing what kernel configurations to compare. The cross-links in each section page are intentional guides through that interdependency, not just navigation decoration. Follow them when a section refers to another -- the referred page usually contains the context that makes the current page fully useful.