What is aRts?
The Analog Real-Time Synthesizer, or aRts, is a modular system for synthesizing sound and music on a digital
computer. Using small building blocks called modules, the user can easily build complex audio processing tools.
Modules typically provide functions such as sound waveform generators, filters, audio effects, mixing, and playback
of digital audio in different file formats.
The artsd sound server mixes audio from several sources in real time, allowing multiple sound applications to
transparently share access to sound hardware.
Using MCOP, the Multimedia Communication Protocol, multimedia applications can be network transparent,
authenticated for security, and cross-platform using interfaces defined in a language-independent way using IDL.
Support is also provided for non aRts-aware legacy applications. As a core component of the KDE 2 desktop
environment, aRts provides the basis for the KDE multimedia architecture, and will in future support more media
types including video. Like KDE, aRts runs on a number of operating systems, including Linux® and BSD variants. It
can also be used independently of KDE.
artsd
Access to the sound hardware resources is controlled by artsd, the aRts daemon. This allows different applications
to simultaneously send requests to the server, where they can be mixed together and played. Without a centralized
sound server a single application using a sound device would prevent other applications from using it.
To use aRts there should be one and only one copy of artsd running. It is typically run when KDE starts up if it is
enabled in the KControl Sound Server panel.