The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI
functionality to the Linux operating system.
Logically ALSA consists of these components:
- A set of kernel drivers.
These drivers are responsible for handling the physical sound
hardware from within the Linux kernel, and have been the standard
sound implementation in Linux since kernel version 2.5
- A kernel level API for manipulating the ALSA devices.
- A user-space C library for simplified access to the sound hardware
from userspace applications. This library is called libasound
and is required by all ALSA capable applications.
More information about ALSA may be found on the project homepage
http://www.alsa-project.org