I am pleased to announce the preliminary release of the Enlightened Sound Daemon (EsounD version 0.2.8) for Linux. More details at http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/EsounD.html. This program is designed to mix together several digitized audio streams for playback by a single device. The current list of features includes the following functionality: o A simple authentication scheme is implemented. The first process to present a 16 byte key to the daemon determines the ownership of the daemon. The owner of the daemon may allow or disallow connections from other keys. If a HUP signal is received, ownership of the daemon is reset. o Playback of multiple digital samples simultaneously is supported. The daemon uses a raw sample format which is easily generated by the SOX utility from many other data formats. o The mixed audio data may be output from the daemon as a "monitor" stream. o Recording from the current input of the sound device is supported. Full duplex operation (simultaneous recording and playback) is supported where available. o Client connections may cache samples for playback by an assigned identification number. For example, a window manager may cache samples in the server for playback on various events, and play them back without replaying the full audio stream for the sample. Samples may be looped until the server receives a "stop sample" message. o Filters may be inserted into the audio stream, for processing of the audio signal between the mixing and playback stages. o Some server status information is available to clients. The Enlightened Sound Daemon is known to work to varying degrees on Linux/OSS, Linux/ALSA, Solaris, HPUX, *BSD, and IRIX operating systems. Ports to other platforms are appreciated. This is to be considered an alpha release, as functionality remains to be implemented.