GNOME Sound Support

GNOME currently (1999-07-10) uses the Esound library to provide constant digital audio access to all GNOME applications. This allows multiple applications to play back and record digital audio streams simultaneously, as well as playing back precached audio samples upon demand. The audiofile library is also used by GNOME to provide easy manipulation of a wide range of digital audio file formats.

In addition, GNOME applications can easily register events for which they want user-configurable sounds to be played, and then trigger those events through the gnome triggers system. The sound events are automatically listed in the control center's sound configuration screen, allowing the user to easily assign different sound files to specific events.