Finally, alsa for bluez5: https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa

Somebody wrote ALSA sound plugin for bluez5. IIRC, pulseaudio came to Slackware under the reason that bluez5 does not support alsa at all. So, now it's possible to RIP pulseaudio, since there are no more reasons for it.

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Out of curiosity I checked how they communicate with Bluez daemon and they also use DBus service:
I think that's the only possible way to communicate with Bluez. Anyway, it's good to know that Bluez is not tied to Pulseaudio in any special case because I thought it is.

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Yes, that's correct. On version 5 BlueZ team announced, that they will drop audio(media) stuff and leave it for third-party. Pulsaudio team wrote plugin for BlueZ. ALSA project does not. So there was no audio support for ALSA. Now it's possible to get ALSA support back and drop pulseaudio. At least, it will be wise to add packages bluez-alsa and libfdm-aac (already in SBo) needed by blues-alsa to extra/pure-alsa-system.

I wouldn't mind seeing Pulse go bye-bye. It's still a damnable headache to get working right.

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Do you mean that Pulseaudio team wrote DBus backend for BlueZ?

OSSv4 is good for a few PCIe audio cards and onboard chipsets. It seems to have better audio quality and latency than ALSA in a few cases.

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No, they wrote that "third-party media plugin" that connects to "media" bluez DBus interface and source/sinks media streams provided by bluez from/to pulseaudio audio devices.

BlueZ does not depend on pulseaudio, it's just provide DBus interface and data streams to any sound system willing to work with sound streams from/to bluetooth devices.

Now we have working "third-party media plugin" for ALSA too.

PS: Just compiled bluez-alsa and tested at least A2DP source and sink profiles. Works like a charm both ways. Have to check HF profile, but don't think there will be problems.

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I think there will be many who quite like pulseaudio regardless of the now unneeded bluez requirement - maybe (hopefully) RIP wishes are premature.

chris

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It could Rest In Peace in some extra/pulseaudio f.e., like pure-alsa now.

Agreed.
I had it installed long before it was added to Slackware. The volume was never high enough, but PulseAudio solved that problem. Plus it is easier to control two different sound cards and bounce between the two.

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Ok, so I misunderstood - you meant that Pulseaudio wrote the part that connects to Bluez DBus service and now Alsa people did it too. Thanks for clarification.

One day I need to check how this Alsa-based Bluez performs. I use some cheap no-name Bluetooth USB dongle:
and Bose headphones and lag is so big that it's impossible to watch videos and sometimes sound goes fast-forward very fast.

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Not all dongles correctly deal with SCO Bluetooth streams used for sound transfer. ISSC is not the best choice, at least was not few years ago. Try another, with CSR or Broadcom chip, for example. Also, there could be problems if you stream audio to/from some device and, say, use bluetooth mouse, or have some another device connected to the same dongle. I also had some byte loss in SCO streams even on CSR based dongles with Bluez4 and earlier Bluez5 with pulseaudio, may be they broke something at some point. However, now everything runs smooth and without problems with my Broadcom BCM2045B controller with both pulse and that bluealsa. Bluealsa have less delay than pulseaudio plugin.

I had to chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa , now everything's fine !

I am just joining my thanks to OP thanks. It works, I am happy with this cause pulse is too heavy for my old laptop. I can relief now cause I am not aware anymore that watching movies could melt down my processor.

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