LinuxQuestions.org
Help answer threads with 0 replies.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Slackware
User Name
Password
Slackware This Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 04-09-2010, 02:18 AM   #1
Daedra
Senior Member
 
Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Springfield, MO
Distribution: Slackware64-15.0
Posts: 2,670

Rep: Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369
Anyone using pulseaudio?


I've been thinking of trying pulseaudio and was wondering if anyone here has already tried it and what they think of it? I've been reading up and it sounds pretty straight forward.
 
Old 04-09-2010, 09:35 AM   #2
dugan
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Nov 2003
Location: Canada
Distribution: distro hopper
Posts: 11,198

Rep: Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307
I'm curious as to why.

Pulseaudio's only purpose is to allow you to play more than one audio stream at once. But if your applications are outputting sound through ALSA, then you can already do that. And if you have applications that will only output through OSS, then the OSS4 drivers will give them software mixing without introducing the massive amount of latency that Pulseaudio does.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 04-09-2010, 09:53 AM   #3
rmjohnso
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2006
Location: Wisconsin
Distribution: Slackware64-Current
Posts: 294

Rep: Reputation: 43
Daedra, this thread covers me getting pulseaudio up and running on my laptop:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...urrent-792080/

I quickly abandonded it because many of the supporting programs for controls required a number of GNOME dependencies, which I didn't want to try to get to work. However, I did manage to get sound working, so I consider it a successful test.
 
Old 04-09-2010, 10:08 AM   #4
tommcd
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jun 2006
Location: Philadelphia PA USA
Distribution: Lubuntu, Slackware
Posts: 2,230

Rep: Reputation: 293Reputation: 293Reputation: 293
For what it is worth, Pulse Audio, at least how it is deployed in Ubuntu 9.10, is a huge resource hog compared to alsa. I have uninstalled pulse audio on Ubuntu and I use only alsa, which does everything I would ever need.
When Ubuntu 10.04 comes out, I will likely switch to Xubuntu, or Lubuntu, since these variants of *buntu do not use pulse audio.

Last edited by tommcd; 04-09-2010 at 10:11 AM.
 
Old 04-09-2010, 10:27 AM   #5
GazL
LQ Veteran
 
Registered: May 2008
Posts: 6,882

Rep: Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988Reputation: 4988
I avoid pulseaudio like the plague. It's most bogusly unslack!
 
Old 04-09-2010, 03:21 PM   #6
koen plessers
Member
 
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Belgium
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 191

Rep: Reputation: 30
I removed it from my Mandriva system, because of very very poor sound quality.
 
Old 04-09-2010, 03:36 PM   #7
Daedra
Senior Member
 
Registered: Dec 2005
Location: Springfield, MO
Distribution: Slackware64-15.0
Posts: 2,670

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369Reputation: 1369
Quote:
Originally Posted by dugan View Post
I'm curious as to why.

Pulseaudio's only purpose is to allow you to play more than one audio stream at once. But if your applications are outputting sound through ALSA, then you can already do that. And if you have applications that will only output through OSS, then the OSS4 drivers will give them software mixing without introducing the massive amount of latency that Pulseaudio does.
yeah I got mixing working fine with alsa, but i noticed some distributions install pulseaudio by default. I have heard bad things about it and these post seem to reaffirm that. I'm just going to leave it alone.

Thanks
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 04-09-2010, 03:37 PM   #8
dugan
LQ Guru
 
Registered: Nov 2003
Location: Canada
Distribution: distro hopper
Posts: 11,198

Rep: Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307Reputation: 5307
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daedra View Post
yeah I got mixing working fine with alsa, but i noticed some distributions install pulseaudio by default.
I think that's a side-effect of having GNOME as a default desktop.
 
Old 04-12-2010, 02:31 AM   #9
Ivshti
Member
 
Registered: Sep 2008
Distribution: Linvo
Posts: 132

Rep: Reputation: 43
GNOME can be compiled without PulseAudio, although this is not what the developers intended.

Anyway, I like it: it has some neat features, and the per-stream volume setting has proven pretty useful to me. I also never had problems with the new versions with all the recommended patches.

BTW, I'm still searching for a Slackware fan who likes things like PulseAudio and the modern *kit stuff.
 
Old 04-13-2010, 04:41 AM   #10
tommcd
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jun 2006
Location: Philadelphia PA USA
Distribution: Lubuntu, Slackware
Posts: 2,230

Rep: Reputation: 293Reputation: 293Reputation: 293
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivshti View Post
GNOME can be compiled without PulseAudio, although this is not what the developers intended.

Anyway, I like it: it has some neat features, and the per-stream volume setting has proven pretty useful to me. I also never had problems with the new versions with all the recommended patches.
Ivishti,
So is pulse audio part of Gnome then? Does this mean that any Gnome based distro will have to incorporate pulse audio as new versions of Gnome are released?
I noticed that your Livno distro uses Gnome. Does Livno use pulse audio? And if so, do you find that pulse use more of your CPU compared to alsa?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivshti View Post
BTW, I'm still searching for a Slackware fan who likes things like PulseAudio and the modern *kit stuff.
For what it's worth, there seems to be very few Ubuntu uses who like pulse audio. There are many long threads on removing Pulse in Ubutnu:
http://ubuntu-ky.ubuntuforums.org/sh....php?p=8284273
I don't know how much of this would apply to Slackware with pulse audio, but here is a comprehensive thread of pulse audio workarounds and fixes:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578

Last edited by tommcd; 04-13-2010 at 04:44 AM.
 
1 members found this post helpful.
Old 04-14-2010, 12:36 PM   #11
henkees
Member
 
Registered: Feb 2008
Location: Netherlands, Zeeland
Distribution: Slackware64 current multilib, Gentoo
Posts: 43

Rep: Reputation: 18
I'm a fan of Pulse...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivshti View Post
BTW, I'm still searching for a Slackware fan who likes things like PulseAudio and the modern *kit stuff.
I am using PulseAudio, because I like the very cool music visualisations from ProjectM; and ProjectM needs pulseaudio...

With modern hardware I don't see so much difference in speed / cpu usage between Alsa and PulseAudio.
 
Old 04-14-2010, 04:57 PM   #12
T3slider
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jul 2007
Distribution: Slackware64-14.1
Posts: 2,367

Rep: Reputation: 843Reputation: 843Reputation: 843Reputation: 843Reputation: 843Reputation: 843Reputation: 843
In my opinion, I'd skip pulse unless you are using it for a reason. I used pulse to capture sound from JACK-unaware applications (that cannot be compiled to support JACK, like Skype or Flash in Firefox). I would never run it as a permanent sound daemon...it really is not necessary and does not improve anything IMO. If you have a reason for running pulse, then go ahead, but I would use it sparingly and only when necessary. It is not the best, most stable sound daemon I have ever seen. Far from it, in fact.
 
Old 04-14-2010, 05:23 PM   #13
brucehinrichs
Member
 
Registered: Mar 2008
Location: US
Distribution: Debian Sid; Sabayon, UbuntuStudio, Slackware-multilib 13.1, Peppermint Ice, CentOS
Posts: 575

Rep: Reputation: 69
I have a home recording studio set up and use JACK for this purpose. For day-to-day operation, ALSA is great. I am one who avoids pulseaudio like the plague. I can patch all kinds of equipment together physically and with JACK, but pulseaudio has always confused me. It seems very unintuitive and just plain klunky.
 
Old 04-14-2010, 10:35 PM   #14
Cheesesteak
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2008
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 102

Rep: Reputation: 24
I've used it with GSB

I installed Gnome SlackBuild 2.26 on top of Slackware64 13.0. I made use of PulseAudio to get simultaneous sound output between my host and VirtualBox VM's. With ALSA alone, I didn't have any trouble with multiple sources on the host. VirtualBox was my only roadblock. After using Pulse for a while, I began to run into intermittent no-audio issues on both host and guest OS's.

I got the itch to try AlienBOB's KDE 4.4.2 packages, so I upgraded to -current. I just installed VirtualBox 3.1.6 PUEL, and everything is working great with just ALSA.

Core i7 920
Intel DX58SO motherboard
on-board Intel HDA audio
 
Old 04-15-2010, 01:10 PM   #15
Ivshti
Member
 
Registered: Sep 2008
Distribution: Linvo
Posts: 132

Rep: Reputation: 43
PulseAudio is developed independently from GNOME. However, GNOME is able to use PulseAudio as the default sound server.
Every application that supports ALSA can, but this is due to the pulseaudio alsa plugin. GNOME can use PulseAudio directly using it's own API.
GNOME also has tools which are able to use PulseAudio's abilities for additional functionality in the desktop.

And BTW, Linvo does include PulseAudio and I'm happy with that desicion.

I _DO_ agree that PulseAudio creates some issues, but IMO, most of them are in the past now. A lot of things have changed and PulseAudio is supported by large projects like Ubuntu and Fedora.

Personally, I think that this "abstraction layer" (a better name: a sound server) is needed to provide some additional functionality and flexibility to the sound. Honestly, I think PulseAudio is a bit bloated, but everything else isn't functional enough.

Last edited by Ivshti; 04-15-2010 at 01:13 PM.
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
pulseaudio kde4 sycamorex Linux - Software 5 01-07-2010 03:32 PM
pulseaudio in fedora11 sycamorex Linux - Software 4 07-10-2009 11:22 AM
distribution without pulseaudio nooblinux Linux - Newbie 3 04-05-2009 06:07 AM
FC 8 , Pulseaudio no worky mickeyboa Fedora 2 03-30-2009 02:52 AM
Pulseaudio RAFAL Linux - Software 7 08-23-2008 03:37 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Distributions > Slackware

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 11:14 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration