The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI functionality to the Linux operating system. ALSA has the following significant features:

• Efficient support for all types of audio interfaces, from consumer sound cards to professional multichannel audio interfaces.
• Fully modularized sound drivers.
• SMP and thread-safe design.
• User space library (alsa-lib) to simplify application programming and provide higher level functionality.
• Support for the older Open Sound System (OSS) API, providing binary compatibility for most OSS programs.