[SOLVED] Thanks for the pure alsa software in /extra/pure-alsa-system
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Distribution: Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, Fedora, Ubuntu
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a4z, Your posting privileges have been revoked for the weekend. A few others are close. All, if you can't be civil or use the ignore list, bans in this forum are going to become more frequent.
I suppose that Slackware is NOT a Music Studio distribution, just like it is NOT yet even Enterprise Ready.
How about the bat-folks to use instead the right tool for the right job, like a ultra-specialized distribution with Real-Time Kernels, OSS and all shiny features features which are a must for those with bat ears?
Because, certainly a generic Linux distribution does not offer them all.
Hint, hint, hint: imagine a Slackware Professional Studio for a subscription of only $5000 per year.
I bet that a handful of bat-folks willing to pay will make it happen.
Since you pointed out that Slackware is not a dedicated DAW distro and others pointed out it is what it has always been, a Vanilla platform complete for the most common basics but also possibly the best platform to customize and build into whatever one likes. Patrick's exact words are that he "doesn't suppose what people will use Slackware for".
I'd like to point out that there is a project called Studioware that is in fact a release of Slackware built up as a dedicated DAW and minor media center, no $5000/yr. required. You can find it at Studioware.org and notice it is pure ALSA by default. I imagine those folks are thankful to Patrick for the clean option, too, as well as the foundation that puts the power in the User/Admin's hands.
The migration from OSS to ALSA did have some impact.
I noticed this when recording sound from my turntable... For a while there, I was using Slackware to convert LPs to CD.
When you're doing this, it has to be done in realtime, because you're dealing with analogue media (i.e. records). This means that the exercise occupies the computer for hours on end. With OSS, I could multi-task... Surf the 'net while recording, and it would be fine.
The experience I had with ALSA was that the recording would have glitches if I even moved the mouse slightly after starting. There would be this ungodly assault on your ears, like fingernails on a chalkboard in the middle of your recording. Anyhow, that was a long time ago. I've not done anything like that since about 2002.
Quote:
Originally Posted by the3dfxdude
The /addition/ of pulse /on top/ of ALSA was clearly noticeable. Never before was my sound was so bad and there was no way to fix it, and no way to have proper device control. Worse, it is not really possible to make pulse properly coexist with the ALSA environment.
It works here... on multiple machines of varying ages. I'd be interested to know what hardware you have and why it doesn't work for you.
Anyhow, it is truly great that we have the option to remove the things we don't want.
Why am I using Slackware instead of something like CCRMA's Fedora core? Because I'm not completely locked into whatever choices made by CCRMA for their labs. I wouldn't presume that they'd know about my hardware and gear, so the tools I need are compiled against my computer. Anal, perhaps, but when you're dealing with real time synthesis or live electronics, you do need to guard against any disaster. If you don't have your s*** together, you lose valuable rehearsal time. (Which you may or may not be paying real-world money for.)
Say what you want about Slackware, but it's stable. It's not intended to be a DAW, but it doesn't fight you, if you want it to be such. (Or a gaming machine, or whatever else you need.)
pulseaudio doesn't work reliably for me, I sometimes get no audio in applications, apparently at random.
I also hate how the pulseaudio process behaves.
So I went back to ALSA manually. I will be a user of /extra/pure-alsa-system when the next release shows up.
FWIW, OSS was fine for me too, my audio requirements are very simple.
I am posting here, not out of any necro sense (dunno if ~2 months is necro but w/e) but simply out of some sense of netiquette in avoiding thread duplication, although this should be a tangent different enough that if this goes unseen I will resort to a new thread. I'm just hoping this will get seen and still invoke enough interest to get a response.
I'd very much like to know what would be required to do the same thing to a relatively stock 14.2 Multilib install since I imagine there is no ETA on Slackware v15. I want to eliminate any and every call to anything pulseaudio related, in short Pure just like it's called in Current. What is holding me back is I don't understand all of the hooks that pulse installs so that even with uninstalling pulse so much still calls for it. Some of it appears to be leftover cruft that doesn't get uninstalled or returned to original state but considering that Steam calls for Pulseaudio but continues right along if it is not found (though some games it can launch doesn't) I don't see why there are so many hard dependencies as noted by looking in /Extra/Pure Alsa.
If this is all of what has to be done to be completely rid of pulseaudio then so be it but how would anyone build such libraries for 14.2? Is it just that references to pulse are simply commented out or is it deeper than that? One big question is why in Hell does any ALSA app/library require any reference to pulse???
Thank you in advance for any comments that might help me better understand and accomplish what I really want which is to go back to the state that existed for over a decade ending after 14.1 where pulseaudio didn't have any hooks in Slackware. It seems to me it was vastly easier to drop an entire WM/DE than it is to eliminate pulse.
Thank you in advance for any comments that might help me better understand and accomplish what I really want which is to go back to the state that existed for over a decade ending after 14.1 where pulseaudio didn't have any hooks in Slackware. It seems to me it was vastly easier to drop an entire WM/DE than it is to eliminate pulse.
Quote:
Thu Apr 26 01:34:12 UTC 2018
Don't like PulseAudio? Well... I hear you. Personally, it works for me, and it
makes it easier to switch between multiple audio inputs and outputs compared
to using plain ALSA. PulseAudio got off to a rocky start in the Linux world,
where it found itself adopted before it was ready (it was even billed on its
own website at the time as "the software that currently breaks your audio").
It's my opinion that the reputation that PulseAudio acquired due to problems
back then isn't deserved any longer. If your hardware supports the sampling
rate of the audio data you're trying to play, PulseAudio will not resample it
(and if your hardware doesn't support that rate, resampling can hardly be
avoided). The increased latency has not been an issue here. Nevertheless, I
recognize that there are use cases where PulseAudio is still a detriment.
While I don't generally recommend removing PulseAudio, I'm not going to cram
it down your throat. So, if you'd like to be rid of PulseAudio, head over to
the new extra/pure-alsa-system directory and follow the instructions in the
README file there, and you'll have a PulseAudio-free pure ALSA system.
Thanks to orbea who sent me a small patch for the mpg123.SlackBuild so that
it would detect the lack of PulseAudio and not try to build in support, which
got me to thinking about all of this. Cheers! :-)
a/btrfs-progs-v4.16.1-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded.
kde/kopete-4.14.3-x86_64-7.txz: Rebuilt.
Dropped obsolete wlm (libmsn) protocol. Thanks to alienBOB.
l/libmsn-4.2.1-x86_64-3.txz: Removed.
l/poppler-data-0.4.9-noarch-1.txz: Upgraded.
extra/pure-alsa-system/MPlayer-20180208-x86_64-3_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/alsa-lib-1.1.6-x86_64-3_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/alsa-plugins-1.1.6-x86_64-2_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/audacious-plugins-3.9-x86_64-4_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/ffmpeg-3.4.2-x86_64-2_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/fluidsynth-1.1.10-x86_64-2_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/gst-plugins-good-1.14.0-x86_64-2_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/gst-plugins-good0-0.10.31-x86_64-3_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/kde-runtime-4.14.3-x86_64-7_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/kmix-4.14.3-x86_64-4_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/libao-1.2.2-x86_64-2_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/libcanberra-0.30-x86_64-6_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/mpg123-1.25.10-x86_64-2_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/phonon-4.8.3-x86_64-3_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/sox-14.4.2-x86_64-5_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/xfce4-mixer-4.11.0-x86_64-1_alsa.txz: Upgraded.
extra/pure-alsa-system/xfce4-volumed-0.1.13-x86_64-4_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
extra/pure-alsa-system/xine-lib-1.2.9-x86_64-2_alsa.txz: Rebuilt.
+--------------------------+
The new pure-alsa-system directory in /extra for slackware-current introduced in April does what you want.
The new pure-alsa-system directory in /extra for slackware-current introduced in April does what you want.
Before i do this, and then owe you a huge debt of gratitude as well as Eric and Patrick for their parts in working this out, you do understand i want to do this on a 14.2 Multilib system not Current, right? I actually thought about trying this out since the version of ALSA is only one tiny increment newer and most of the others are either the same versions or similarly very close. However then I noticed that there are a few packages that don't exist at all in 14.2. One example is fluidsynth and another is xfce-mixer. Seeing this is what inspired me to query here so I might have some indication if compatibility exists between Current and 14.2 in this area.
If compatibility does indeed exist I suppose I will need to compat32 the appropriate packages to avoid any mismatch with even such slight increments, right? I try not to make blind assumptions.
Before i do this, and then owe you a huge debt of gratitude as well as Eric and Patrick for their parts in working this out, you do understand i want to do this on a 14.2 Multilib system not Current, right?
Yes. I realize that you want this on a 14.2 system. I had nothing to do with introducing the pure-alsa-system to slackware-current(thanks for the kind words). I am grateful that this pure alsa choice will be available to us in Slackware 15.0.
Yes. I realize that you want this on a 14.2 system. I had nothing to do with introducing the pure-alsa-system to slackware-current(thanks for the kind words). I am grateful that this pure alsa choice will be available to us in Slackware 15.0.
Me too, for whenever that is. In the meantime...is that a really diplomatic "No" ?
Me too, for whenever that is. In the meantime...is that a really diplomatic "No" ?
Perhaps you could use Pat's work as a starting point to create a pure alsa system for 14.2?
I still use Pulse Audio on 5 out of 6 Slackware64-current work stations. As I mentioned previously I'm using Pat's Alsa software on one -current unit.
The /addition/ of pulse /on top/ of ALSA was clearly noticeable. Never before was my sound was so bad and there was no way to fix it, and no way to have proper device control.
In what way was the sound so bad? I'm not doubting you in the least, BTW. I just haven't noticed anything like that on my systems. TBH, however, I don't have specialized sound cards and I do have tinnitus in my right ear. So if Pulse adds a high pitched whining noise to the right channel, I'd never notice it.
In what way was the sound so bad? I'm not doubting you in the least, BTW. I just haven't noticed anything like that on my systems. TBH, however, I don't have specialized sound cards and I do have tinnitus in my right ear. So if Pulse adds a high pitched whining noise to the right channel, I'd never notice it.
FWIW Richard, in my experience I never found pulseaudio to sound bad even on my way over-the-top PC sound system (around $2300.00 USD worth). That was never the issue. The major problem is one of substantially increased latency, the delay between say a mouse click and an apps response to say punch in an overdub or splice in a passage. 10-20msec is bad enough once but in pro and semi-pro recording where many passes must often be made and the latency is cumulative it really adds up in a hurry. Another minor concern is that it has similar function to JACK which is simply light years better at that job and does substantially more. If that wasn't enough JACK had to be modified to create a version that would work on pulseaudio systems and with now 3 layers on top of the hardware we can kiss anything approaching "realtime" goodbye.
The above are functional reasons that I don't want pulseaudio on my system and I recognize that not only do those issues not affect the average listener, those with onboard audio chips, commonly not having hardware mixing, will find pulse quite beneficial. It's still, even on my system, a problem that requires jumping through several flaming hoops in getting 3 soundcards (onboard, video card HDMI, and my ESI Juli@) all working in concert. My .asoundrc is huge and complicated but vastly less complicated in getting everything forgetting about pulse entirely to extricate it from my system.
On top of all that it rather offends me that ALSA will work without Pulseaudio but Pulseaudio will not work without ALSA. That just feels parasitic to me and that particular parasite spreads into numerous nooks and crannnies and takes the software equivalent of chemotherapy to be rid of it. I tried to use and like it but I have ended up hating it far more than systemd. I find it unnecessarily intrusive and irresponsible. It looks to me like JACK "missed the boat" since it could easily have done the same job as pulse and a lot more and done it all better AND been ridiculously easy to disable, or remove. Sad story really.
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