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PulseAudio under the hood

gavv.github.io

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Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#81

Post by notalaser »

lathiat wrote: post #76
ashark wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was entirely happy with alsa and still don't know of any use-case I have that's better served by the more fragile, more resource-hungry PulseAudio. I assume it's useful to someone.

Spoken confidently like someone that never tried to play sound in two applications at once.

This has worked reliably in ALSA before it has worked reliably in PulseAudio (and, in fact, way before PulseAudio received any meaningful adoption, when Fedora enrolled everyone in PA's beta testing).

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#82

Post by adambyrtek »

bandrami wrote: post #69
ro_sharp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the use cases you're describing are quite distinct from a "Linux on the desktop" user. The audio experience for this kind of user (myself included) has improved dramatically in the past few years.

I'm a desktop Linux user; I preferred the old way. I do get that most people like multiplexing (I don't; I want exactly one sound source at a given time), and I'll grant that has improved. I banged my head against my desk for a couple of days when Slackware switched to Pulse with 14.2, allegedly because it was needed for bluetooth. I still have difficulty believing that people actually use bluetooth for audio, but ap…

> I still have difficulty believing that people actually use bluetooth for audio

So you don't believe that somebody would like to be able to use wireless headphones?

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#83

Post by Aissen »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #80
lathiat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken confidently like someone that never tried to play sound in two applications at once.

dmix works just fine for "normal users" and has since the first time I used it (sometime in 2005 or so)

How did you ensure one app wasn't much louder than the other ?

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#84

Post by wereHamster »

notalaser wrote: post #81
lathiat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken confidently like someone that never tried to play sound in two applications at once.

This has worked reliably in ALSA before it has worked reliably in PulseAudio (and, in fact, way before PulseAudio received any meaningful adoption, when Fedora enrolled everyone in PA's beta testing).

Well, maybe in the later days, but there was a long time when it didn't work well at all. I remember having to mess with the ALSA configuration to make it work. And then you also had apps which only supported OSS and getting them to work together with ALSA was an additional pain.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#85

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

Aissen wrote: post #83
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dmix works just fine for "normal users" and has since the first time I used it (sometime in 2005 or so)

How did you ensure one app wasn't much louder than the other ?

I haven't had a problem with that at all, so I'm not sure :)

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#86

Post by [deleted] »

clouddrover wrote: post #50
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

[deleted]

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#87

Post by simias »

lathiat wrote: post #76
ashark wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was entirely happy with alsa and still don't know of any use-case I have that's better served by the more fragile, more resource-hungry PulseAudio. I assume it's useful to someone.

Spoken confidently like someone that never tried to play sound in two applications at once.

I keep seeing this argument in this thread and quite frankly I'm dumbfounded. Last time I've had this issue was more than a decade ago on FreeBSD and it was solved by tweaking my OSS config to enable multiple channels. I've never, ever had this issue with Alsa. And I'm not a fan of Alsa either, PA just managed to be even more opaque and less reliable in my experience.

Now, it's just anecdotic evidence of course but basic audio mixing is not exactly rocket science, you shouldn't need something as convoluted as PulseAudio to get it right. I mean, what the hell: https://gavv.github.io/blog/pulseaudio-under-the-hood/diagra...

Some power users might need these additional features, I don't. I wouldn't mind having all of that if the basics just worked reliably but they don't.

These days disabling PA is my go-to first step while troubleshooting audio issues on linux and more often than not I don't have to go to step #2.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#88

Post by zeveb »

adambyrtek wrote: post #82
bandrami wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a desktop Linux user; I preferred the old way. I do get that most people like multiplexing (I don't; I want exactly one sound source at a given time), and I'll grant that has improved. I banged my head against my desk for a couple of days when Slackware switched to Pulse with 14.2, allegedly because it was needed for bluetooth. I still have difficulty believing that people actually use bluetooth for audio, but ap…

> I still have difficulty believing that people actually use bluetooth for audio So you don't believe that somebody would like to be able to use wireless headphones?

I don't: wireless headphones seem strictly worse in every way than wired. They require batteries and charging; they introduce lag; they are expensive; they are easier to lose; they don't have a convenient cable to hang on to.

I am completely and totally flabbergasted by their popularity. It's as though millions of people were turning their noses up at fine, free homemade French food and paying for McDonald's instead.

Re: PulseAudio under the hood

#90

Post by Spivak »

adambyrtek wrote: post #82
bandrami wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a desktop Linux user; I preferred the old way. I do get that most people like multiplexing (I don't; I want exactly one sound source at a given time), and I'll grant that has improved. I banged my head against my desk for a couple of days when Slackware switched to Pulse with 14.2, allegedly because it was needed for bluetooth. I still have difficulty believing that people actually use bluetooth for audio, but ap…

> I still have difficulty believing that people actually use bluetooth for audio So you don't believe that somebody would like to be able to use wireless headphones?

Or want to play music from my laptop to my stereo speakers?
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