aRts, which stands for
analog
Real
time
synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is most famous for previously being used in
KDE (series
2 and
3) to simulate an
analog synthesizer.
A key component of aRts is the
sound server which mixes several
sound streams in
realtime. The
sound server, called
artsd (d for
daemon), is also utilized as the standard sound server for KDE2–3. However, the sound server is not dependent on KDE and can be used in other projects. It is a direct competitor to
JACK Audio Connection Kit, another real-time sound server, and an indirect competitor to the
Enlightened Sound Daemon (ESD). It is now common to use
ALSA's software mixing instead of artsd.
The
aRts platform also includes aRts Builder — an
application for building custom layouts and configurations for audio mixers, sequencers, synthesizers and other audio
schema via a user-friendly
graphical user interface. aRts is
free software, distributed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License.
End of project
On December 2, 2004 aRts' creator and primary developer Stefan Westerfeld announced he was leaving the project due to a variety of fundamental development and technical issues with aRts.
In KDE 4 developers chose to replace aRts with a new multimedia API known as
Phonon. Phonon will provide a common interface on top of other systems, such as
Xine, to avoid being dependent on a single multimedia framework.
See also
- PulseAudio - Advanced Sound Server intended to be a replacement for the ESD
