Understanding ALSA Internals for Audio Playback

Anish Kumar

Abstract: This paper discusses the collaboration between the ALSA userspace library and ALSA kernel drivers to facilitate basic audio playback. We will explore how userspace applications pass data to kernel space and how the kernel processes this audio data before sending it to the hardware. The discussion will include a hypothetical system where a DSP is connected to a Linux-based ASoC, interfacing with a hardware codec, which in turn is connected to a speaker.

Keywords: ALSA, Linux Kernel, Embedded Audio