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PulseAudio has been removed from dports

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Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#31

Post by janoc »

abstractbeliefs wrote: post #5
na85 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who needs features anyway. Can you name a single feature or use case addressed by PulseAudio that isn't addressed by ALSA?

On the flip side, if everything can be done by ALSA, and PA is seemingly objectively worse, for what reason are people building their software against PA? Why is it being included anywhere at all?

Except ALSA cannot do everything that PA does. ALSA is low-level Linux sound API that PA builds on. Read the post above, it explains the difference.

Basically, if you want multiple sounds playing at the same time (e.g. music + desktop notifications) and you don't have hardware mixer (many common sound chips don't and rely on Windows drivers/sound system to provide the functionality), you are out of luck (no, the ancient dmix plugin is not a solution!). Bluetooth audio (headsets) doesn't really work without PA.

Configuring apps to use different devices (music should go to speakers and video conferencing to a headset ...) is a pain without PA - most applications don't let you select the input/output devices.

And many other things. ALSA is good, but without PA the sound support on a modern Linux desktop would be stuck right in the late 90s. Is it necessary? Not strictly, but it is one heck of a convenience that most don't even realize they have.

Here is a good post from 2008 explaining many of the issues PulseAudio solves and addressing some of the old FUD:

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/jeffrey-stedfast.html

Unfortunately, there are tons of people with strong opinions about both PA and systemd but very little actual knowledge about what these components do and what issues they address in a modern Linux/Unix system. But that doesn't prevent them from spreading BS FUD and conspiracies about this or that group trying to dominate the market or take over the competing Linux distros.

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#33

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

ne0phyte wrote: post #24
Symmetry wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unplugging my headphones and letting other people be able to hear what I'm listening to? I mean, with ALSA I can shut down whatever program I'm using, switch to speakers from headphones, then start the program up again but that's a bit cumbersome. Maybe it is possible with ALSA somehow but not with the programs and distros I'm familiar with. When PulseAudio came out all of a sudden Linux went from less convenient to…

I never had a laptop where plugging in headphones didn't disable the speaker (and nothing I could do about that in software). If that really is the case you could use dmix and have audio played on both the headphone and speaker output. You would still have to mute the speakers when plugging in the headphones though.

That does not apply to non 3.5mm headphones and even those are software driven now in many notebooks.

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#34

Post by pyre »

justinsaccount wrote: post #22

2000: Audio on linux sucks. If you are lucky you can have two applications generating sound at the same time. You can't hotplug audio devices. You can't have per application volume. You can't move audio streams to different output devices. 2016: Pulseaudio sucks because.. reasons.

Pulseaudio was forced down people's throats too early by making it the default in Ubuntu and Fedora. People are still bitter about this. That's your "reasons". If these people were still using some godawful combination of ALSA, eSound, OSS and jackd to do things sound-related nowadays they would be complaining just as loudly about that audio stack.

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#35

Post by amyjess »

microcolonel wrote: post #17
shiftpgdn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a dumb comment and akin to predicting the iphone would fail because it doesn't have flash support. Pulseaudio is a very finicky troublesome bit of open source software. The alternative (ALSA) is much more friendly to work with. Any seasoned sysadmin probably welcomes the death of Pulseaudio.

ALSA is not an alternative to Pulseaudio. If your audio chipset doesn't have a hardware mixer, and about of half of laptop chipsets don't, then you can't play more than one stream at a time. If you have an array microphone, the only way it'll work at all is with Pulseaudio. If you want Bluetooth audio, only Pulseaudio bothers to support it. Pulseaudio uses ALSA anyway (and on DFBSD it uses OSS instead); it's not a re…

> If your audio chipset doesn't have a hardware mixer, and about of half of laptop chipsets don't, then you can't play more than one stream at a time.

Not true. ALSA with dmix can do software mixing, and dmix is enabled by default.

I also really miss ESD, which also enabled software mixing (this was before dmix) but was far simpler and wasn't this over-complicated mess like PulseAudio.

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#36

Post by frign »

Look at sndio if you want to see how sound should be done. Excusing the horrible mess pulseaudio is with the horrible state of Linux Audio doesn't cut it, when OpenBSD has been offering a superior and simpler alternative for years!

It doesn't reinvent the wheel and for anything more complex you can always use JACK, like if you really want to go low-latency.

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#37

Post by klodolph »

I have a love-hate relationship with PulseAudio, and it seems others do too.

It makes sense to have some user-space audio layer. Software mixing, sample rate conversion, and a few other things just make sense in user space, and we can expose only bona fide hardware capabilities through the device interface. Of course, most desktop audio chipsets have hardware mixing, which means that most people think that you can just use OSS (or ALSA on Linux), and it will work. It just doesn't work on everybody's hardware.

In short, there's a hardware jungle out there and software layers like PulseAudio smooth over the differences. It's a shame that it doesn't always work well, and most people think PulseAudio is the source of the problem because most people have hardware mixers.

By comparison, if you just use OSS (or ALSA on Linux) on my computer you might see that incredibly basic features like volume control or the ability to play audio from multple apps don't even work without PulseAudio.

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#38

Post by icebraining »

justinsaccount wrote: post #22

2000: Audio on linux sucks. If you are lucky you can have two applications generating sound at the same time. You can't hotplug audio devices. You can't have per application volume. You can't move audio streams to different output devices. 2016: Pulseaudio sucks because.. reasons.

Pretty much. You can even send the audio from different applications to different audio devices on the fly, which is something that Windows 7 can't do by itself (you have to change the default audio output before starting each application).

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#39

Post by dsr_ »

reacweb wrote: post #16
dsr_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be fair: PulseAudio is the way to go if you have to have a partitioned audio system because you are using a multiheaded multiuser system where each seat has a monitor and keyboard and mouse and mic and speakers, and each user needs to be able to control their own volume mixing without root privileges. For every other case I've seen, ALSA is better and causes fewer problems.

I have already encountered the need for multiheaded system. I wanted to run a second X server on my third screen in order to have a separate mouse. I have not found any website explaining this kind of setup. I have never succeeded: the mouses were active on both X servers.

You need to have a separate xorg.conf for your separate X instance. (Edit) and you need to hardcode each device, not allow autodiscovery.

Re: PulseAudio has been removed from dports

#40

Post by pyre »

anonbanker wrote: post #23
microcolonel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALSA is not an alternative to Pulseaudio. If your audio chipset doesn't have a hardware mixer, and about of half of laptop chipsets don't, then you can't play more than one stream at a time. If you have an array microphone, the only way it'll work at all is with Pulseaudio. If you want Bluetooth audio, only Pulseaudio bothers to support it. Pulseaudio uses ALSA anyway (and on DFBSD it uses OSS instead); it's not a re…

JACK is a (better) alternative to PulseAudio, works in BSD, works with ALSA and OSS, and is superior in every way. The reader is encouraged to download a KXStudio LiveUSB image, and see all the cool things JACK allows that PulseAudio cannot/will not catch up to.

JACK existed pre-Pulseaudio and it wasn't used by very much software. Most things only supported ALSA / OSS / eSound / whatever KDE's sound system was.
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