William Case wrote:
David, Thank you;
If you cut and pasted these answers, I would love to know where (or what site) you got them. If you took the time to write them off the top of your head, I doubly thank you. You have given me enough information to do some proper research of my own particular questions and do a small write up for my own use.
Unfortunately the background digital audio theory comes straight from my electronics and communication engineering degree course (15 years ago), but I guess became "common knowledge" to me due to interest and continued usage, both for at home and work (where we use audio DSP black boxes to save on needing to supply separate audio mixers, equalizers, volume controls, and audio routing boxes to client jobs). If you are into guitar, you might like to try a program like rakarrack. This provides audio processing functionality similar to what those DSP boxes can do, without the expense; but it does require a pretty decent CPU, and an understanding of the jack audio connection kit.
While I was expanding on Tim's answer's, I found myself starting to spout technical terms; I just backpedalled each time and tried to find non-technical words to describe the way things are.
In terms of audio apps in fedora, my summarizing way over-simplifies things, but hopefully it gives a good idea of the makeup of the system. ( http://www.linux.com/feature/119926 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio flowchart a few screens down http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis.html for a what sound system fits best where)
Thanks for the complement, David T.