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PulseAudio under the hood

gavv.github.io

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Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#41

Post by majewsky »

dom0 wrote: post #37
petepete wrote: post #16

PulseAudio posts are always filled with naysayers; the vast vast vast majority of users (like systemd in this regard) have no idea it's even running and just get on with whatever they're doing. I've primarily run Linux over the last fifteen or so years and barely had an issue that's directly PA's fault. I remember the bad old days where a playlist would finish and then GAIM's notification sound would bleat fifteen ti…

Firefox stopped supporting ALSA, so I had to install PA. PA gives me: a noise chirp when the PA daemon starts, which is probably some uninitialized garbage buffer. Sometimes (I don't know what triggers it, seems to be random, and no, it's not the auto-suspend module which is on by default but seems to cause a similar bug for many people) audio starts to lag by .3-.5 seconds. Restarting PA does not help; have to reboo…

The problem with PA is that (it appears like) there aren't really any simple errors. For most software, you have a bunch of common problems that you can find on Stackoverflow easily with a reliable solution.

Pulse, on the other hand, while working fine on 99% of systems, usually fails catastrophically in creative ways on the remaining 1% and it's really hard to even understand what the problem is. (And of course, these 1% will shape public opinion. A large portion of the 99% is not even aware they're using Pulse.)

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#42

Post by majewsky »

sitkack wrote: post #39
Latty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a problem only for FOSS - windows starts dumping my audio down my monitors whenever I change input on them, even if I specifically disable the device. I actually don't see any issues like that on arch with pulse.

OSX remembers per device settings and reapplies them when the new device is visible. I haven't used windows seriously in 15 years. Linux has really bad UX most of the time. OSX is the best of the worst.

I've stopped counting how often OS X moves audio streams to the wrong headset on my work notebook.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#43

Post by majewsky »

kabes wrote: post #33

It would appear that I'm one of the few fans of pulseaudio here. Although I've only started using it since version 9, it always worked fine and we can do quite complex workflows easily. An example scenario: 1. We have multiple incoming RTSP stream where the audio is added as pulse audio streams. 2. We mix a couple of these streams. 3. We send this stream to an external echo cancellation device. 4. We take back the ou…

Seconded. When Pulse works, it's really magical. Like when you go to the hackerspace, connect to the Wifi, and the room speakers appear in your mixer and Just Work.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#44

Post by kuschku »

onli wrote: post #40
kuschku wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I change parts of the config via the UI many times a day. In my case, because I have multiple audio cards and need to change several attributes.

That's minuscule compared to how easy it is to parse config files vs to construct and speak to API. The volume slider UX is a better argument. That's the one thing I can think of where faster changes are indeed useful.

It’s not volume sliding, but close to it. Having a button to move a running audio stream from speakers to headphones to network playback on my phone is amazing.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#45

Post by cuddlybacon »

petepete wrote: post #16

PulseAudio posts are always filled with naysayers; the vast vast vast majority of users (like systemd in this regard) have no idea it's even running and just get on with whatever they're doing. I've primarily run Linux over the last fifteen or so years and barely had an issue that's directly PA's fault. I remember the bad old days where a playlist would finish and then GAIM's notification sound would bleat fifteen ti…

I remember when PulseAudio came out. I loved it! I could actually have two programs open playing audio at the same time[0]. The future was now.

[0] If I remember correctly, this was due to driver issues, but somehow PA just handled it.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#46

Post by bryananderson »

dom0 wrote: post #37
petepete wrote: post #16

PulseAudio posts are always filled with naysayers; the vast vast vast majority of users (like systemd in this regard) have no idea it's even running and just get on with whatever they're doing. I've primarily run Linux over the last fifteen or so years and barely had an issue that's directly PA's fault. I remember the bad old days where a playlist would finish and then GAIM's notification sound would bleat fifteen ti…

Firefox stopped supporting ALSA, so I had to install PA. PA gives me: a noise chirp when the PA daemon starts, which is probably some uninitialized garbage buffer. Sometimes (I don't know what triggers it, seems to be random, and no, it's not the auto-suspend module which is on by default but seems to cause a similar bug for many people) audio starts to lag by .3-.5 seconds. Restarting PA does not help; have to reboo…

You should install apulse and run that with Firefox! Works like a charm.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#47

Post by dijit »

cuddlybacon wrote: post #45
petepete wrote: post #16

PulseAudio posts are always filled with naysayers; the vast vast vast majority of users (like systemd in this regard) have no idea it's even running and just get on with whatever they're doing. I've primarily run Linux over the last fifteen or so years and barely had an issue that's directly PA's fault. I remember the bad old days where a playlist would finish and then GAIM's notification sound would bleat fifteen ti…

I remember when PulseAudio came out. I loved it! I could actually have two programs open playing audio at the same time[0]. The future was now. [0] If I remember correctly, this was due to driver issues, but somehow PA just handled it.

Old versions of ALSA only supported one input, but that's been a solved problem for a decade.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#48

Post by aleden »

baldfat wrote: post #23
mmjaa wrote: post #5

I've never been a fan of PulseAudio, and always remove it and replace it with Jack on my Linux DAW systems, so this article wasn't really of interest to me .. until I started reading it. I think its the first time I've actually had any respect for PulseAudio as a framework .. but I'll be darned if I'm going to ever try to use it again. Jack just works so much better and with far less fuss and overhead .. still, I'm y…

> JACK = less fuss WHAT? That is crazy talk. JACK is the most complected audio setup I have ever worked with. I owned a Record Label and a small studio. If you have to setup JACK from scratch it can get crazy complicated. Once you get it working it is an AWESOME framework but I only would ever see people needing low latency to ever really use it. JACK is 100% for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and it is for low la…

Pulse has excellent integration with jackd:

  /usr/lib/pulse-11.1/modules/module-jack-sink.so

  /usr/lib/pulse-11.1/modules/module-jack-source.so

  /usr/lib/pulse-11.1/modules/module-jackdbus-detect.so
I can use pavucontrol with ease to redirect an application's audio output (e.g. chromium's) to the jack sink.

It's a painful process to accomplish the same thing without using pulseaudio, because you're going to have to mess with ALSA configuration files- and believe me, that's no fun at all.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#50

Post by clouddrover »

mmjaa wrote: post #5

I've never been a fan of PulseAudio, and always remove it and replace it with Jack on my Linux DAW systems, so this article wasn't really of interest to me .. until I started reading it. I think its the first time I've actually had any respect for PulseAudio as a framework .. but I'll be darned if I'm going to ever try to use it again. Jack just works so much better and with far less fuss and overhead .. still, I'm y…

> but I'll be darned if I'm going to ever try to use it again

You probably won't have to. I think the long term plan is for Pipewire to replace PulseAudio (and be an alternative to JACK). Pipewire also does video. The initial release of Pipewire is video only with audio support to come:

https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2017/09/19/launching-pipewire...

http://pipewire.org/

https://github.com/PipeWire/pipewire

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