aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an application that simulates an analog synthesizer under KDE.
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 KDE. 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.
Future of aRts
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 plan to replace aRts with a new multimedia API known as Phonon.[1] Phonon will provide a common interface on top of other systems, such as Xine, to avoid being dependent on a single multimedia framework.
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