However, with my FreeBSD hat on, it should be pointed out that we had this wonderful fellow called Cameron Grant. He is largely responsible for FreeBSD's post-OSS audio system. FreeBSD could have gone several ways for audio at the time, but he made it work, and it worked well. It had virtual channels with in-kernel mixing with very low latency - with full API compatibility. Tragically, Cameron's time was cut short.

Over time, other people got involved and picked it up. The subsystem gradually progressed from the user perspective of being simple and Just Working, to something that is rather powerful today.