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Old 03-27-2018, 12:38 PM   #121
orbea
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At the risk of repeating myself, its design seems rather non-deterministic and leads itself towards these inconsistent phantom bugs. This is why sometimes pulse just stops working on a system after an extended period of time where it did work without any changes besides normal use. It seems likely there are fewer of these bugs than a few years ago, but obviously some remain and I imagine they are rather subtle.
 
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Old 03-27-2018, 02:21 PM   #122
55020
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After more than forty years in information technology I have never seen any nondeterministic problem that didn't have either an underskilled human or faulty hardware as its root cause -- and the former is much more numerous.

Edit: However, it can indeed be the case that the design of software can be contributory in requiring an unreasonable level of skill in the people using it, which is what orbea is driving at. Fair enough.

Last edited by 55020; 03-27-2018 at 02:28 PM.
 
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Old 03-27-2018, 03:37 PM   #123
SCerovec
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Quote:
Originally Posted by allend View Post
I use that key!
I have xbindkeys installed from SBo and in ~/.xbindkeyssrc I have
Code:
## Mod4 + l - Windows + L locks screen
"xlock -allowroot -usefirst"
  Mod4 + l
Just as in Windows, I do "Windows + L" then close the lid to hibernate, so that password entry is forced on resume.
now on sir, i demand You call it "Slack" + L.

which is more natural sounding to me , to put an computer into standby...


Quote:
Originally Posted by orbea View Post
At the risk of repeating myself, its design seems rather non-deterministic and leads itself towards these inconsistent phantom bugs. This is why sometimes pulse just stops working on a system after an extended period of time where it did work without any changes besides normal use. It seems likely there are fewer of these bugs than a few years ago, but obviously some remain and I imagine they are rather subtle.
Wouldn't that be exactly the worst nightmare scenario for any engineer:
s rarely occurring subtle error
 
Old 03-27-2018, 04:09 PM   #124
orbea
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SCerovec View Post
Wouldn't that be exactly the worst nightmare scenario for any engineer:
s rarely occurring subtle error
To put it into perspective, I ran into an issue like that for mplayer not that long ago. When switching to the next video on a playlist mplayer would sometimes crash. Apparently only a few people experienced it and no one else did when I reported it here at LQ. I also reported it upstream to mplayer where that issue sat dormant for 6 months, apparently the maintainers could not reproduce it either until someone discovered some memory corruption in ffmpeg which solved it.

So yes, these issues are not desirable. I suspect that as long as Slackware has pulseaudio it will work for most people while a few people will run into issues, its an inherent consequence of the years of technical debt and heavy abstraction. The bugs do not even have to be all in pulseaudio... There are problems with the alsa user land too, but it works at a much lower level and entirely avoids many of these issues.
 
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Old 03-28-2018, 01:14 AM   #125
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For those who don't understand the severity of latency issues in high quality recording, first, here is a quote from the Audacity wiki located at --- Audacity Devs on Latencies with Mention of ALSA vs/ Pulseaudio --- Note: as seen in the quote below the article says "somewhat higher latency" and doesn't define what "somewhat" is. It is, in fact roughly 8 times the latency of ALSA. My sound card, by no means a top notch 500+ dollar Hammerfall sort, mine, a ESI Juli@ XTe PCIe costs a little more than half that is quite capable of actual use 1.1msec latency and in a complex mix averages around 1.3msec with my custom kernel and on an all ALSA, no Pulse system. On a stock 14.2 Slackware install with Pulse fully enabled and properly configured the best I can get is ~8.2msec. That's ~1.3 vs/ ~8.4 on average. Here's the direct quote.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Audacity-ASIO Audio Interface
On Linux, the standard ALSA audio API typically provides lower latencies than Windows under MME or Windows DirectSound. However, many Linux distributions now use PulseAudio by default for audio routing and mixing. PulseAudio sits between the sound source and the Linux kernel and thus has somewhat higher latency than direct use of ALSA. For lowest latencies, you can use the JACK API that provides both low latency audio communication and audio routing between applications.
So what kind of problems does latency cause?

It's good that AlienBob brought up the Focusrite Scarlett external USB unit because it is quite decent and their website has an excellent video displaying exactly what Latency is and does. You can witness it here ====>>>> --- What Is Latency and Why is it Bad? ---

Please understand that I have grave doubts that I'm the guy to write out a SlackDoc for how to tame Pulse so that it is only used when it absolutely must be used. Some of the "months" of work was trying to like Pulseaudio, but that proved a fool's errand for what I do. I searched around for solutions, yes, but all of the "solutions" I found either worked in some situations and not in every case or seemed cobbled together where results were inconsistent. I did try to learn enough to refine that into a solid solution but admittedly I failed and that's when I created a new thread here and thankfully Didier Spader provided me with the "short leash" that has worked flawlessly ever since. I have yet to try installing Jack(1) (the alsa-only version which has at least two features Jack2 does not <maybe yet> have) but I have that scheduled for the first of April and I am hoping and optimistically expecting no problems in that arena since everything I throw at Didier's seemingly simple solution shines like a new Silver Dollar. Bassmadrigal also helped me but Didier's was the simple, solid and polished final solution and I am indebted and grateful to both of them.

In the past I kept a 32 bit 14.0 install that became essentially a dedicated DAW OpSys when I needed to upgrade it to 14.2 and removed Pulse altogether, at the time breaking a few apps requiring booting back and forth. I am now gaining confidence that I can actually have just one system that handles DAW work and all the other stuff I do, but my animosity toward Pulse came from all the work it took to get here. Basically everything worked perfectly with ALSA and then Pulse came along and defecated in my kitchen and I've been on "clean up" detail ever since, until just recently. Didier deserves the "attaboy" kudos , not me. FWIW when I posted in this thread I really didn't expect it to become so expanded and a bit "controversial". I merely thought such a solid solution for coexistence and control would be a nice touch to be properly documented by people who know code as good or better than I know audio.

Last edited by enorbet; 03-28-2018 at 01:17 AM.
 
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Old 03-28-2018, 10:27 AM   #126
Didier Spaier
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Thanks for your praise, enorbet, although unmerited: I am still a beginner with respect to audio.

Actually the initial aim of these settings was just to allow Slint users who need it to have their system speaking through TTS applications in all situations: at login in runlevel 3 or 4 (if using gdm2 or lightdm) and in graphical environments, while being still able to use other audio sources in the mean time.

It is also possible to get that starting a pulseaudio daemon system wide instead, but as we know this is discouraged by upstream.
 
Old 03-28-2018, 10:33 AM   #127
montagdude
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 55020 View Post
After more than forty years in information technology I have never seen any nondeterministic problem that didn't have either an underskilled human or faulty hardware as its root cause -- and the former is much more numerous.
Apparently from the stuff I deal with at work, it is possible for some non-deterministic things to happen when the software uses non-blocking MPI sends and receives and then does other stuff without checking that the messages were actually received. I would consider that to be a result of software design. (Unless it was unintentional, in which case it may fit into your "underskilled human" category.) Of course, that is not the case with PulseAudio.
 
Old 03-28-2018, 10:51 AM   #128
enorbet
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Some of the comments expressing incredulity or even disdain here remind me of this

Quote:
Originally Posted by King of Denial
What is with all these Pinto owners complaining about explosions? My lovely Pinto has never exploded. I think my Pinto is every bit as safe as a Volvo or Mercedes Benz. Maybe they just need to learn how to drive and avoid rear end collisions


The overall odds may be less than 10% and dependent on "use case" but when it happens to you it instantly and specifically becomes 100%. If you've avoided the issue it is largely because of a differing "use case". That doesn't necessarily equate with foolish, frivolous, or inept. Nobody knows It ALL
 
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Old 03-28-2018, 05:16 PM   #129
chris.willing
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Quote:
Originally Posted by enorbet View Post
Some of the comments expressing incredulity or even disdain here remind me of this



The overall odds may be less than 10% and dependent on "use case" but when it happens to you it instantly and specifically becomes 100%. If you've avoided the issue it is largely because of a differing "use case". That doesn't necessarily equate with foolish, frivolous, or inept. Nobody knows It ALL
You've attracted very few, if any, "comments expressing incredulity or even disdain here" regarding your use case. I don't think your case is helped by suggesting that you have been inundated with criticism by an ignorant mob (the other 90% ?) which doesn't have your particular use case problem.

chris
 
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Old 03-29-2018, 07:29 PM   #130
jimX86
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Quote:
Originally Posted by enorbet View Post
It is, in fact roughly 8 times the latency of ALSA. My sound card, by no means a top notch 500+ dollar Hammerfall sort, mine, a ESI Juli@ XTe PCIe costs a little more than half that is quite capable of actual use 1.1msec latency and in a complex mix averages around 1.3msec with my custom kernel and on an all ALSA, no Pulse system. On a stock 14.2 Slackware install with Pulse fully enabled and properly configured the best I can get is ~8.2msec. That's ~1.3 vs/ ~8.4 on average.
How are you measuring the latency of the card? Are you using jack_delay with a closed loop? I'd like to be able to measure the effectiveness of each step I'm taking to address latency issues, but I'm not at all clear on the best way to do that.
 
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Old 03-30-2018, 09:57 AM   #131
enorbet
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimX86 View Post
How are you measuring the latency of the card? Are you using jack_delay with a closed loop? I'd like to be able to measure the effectiveness of each step I'm taking to address latency issues, but I'm not at all clear on the best way to do that.
Hello jimx86. You're spot on asking this question since latency is often quoted for a specific device in a specific application rather than effective, system wide overall latency. I don't know how accurate the numbers I quoted actually are in that overall scheme, only as a useful baseline that lends consistency to all such measurements. I use the method described here which you seem to already know and AFAIK there isn't a better way, at least yet.

--- From the Ardour Manual ---

I do know that the relative relationship is quite accurate and that it is a relationship I can hear and feel.
 
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Old 03-30-2018, 10:14 AM   #132
enorbet
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chris.willing View Post
You've attracted very few, if any, "comments expressing incredulity or even disdain here" regarding your use case. I don't think your case is helped by suggesting that you have been inundated with criticism by an ignorant mob (the other 90% ?) which doesn't have your particular use case problem.

chris
Hello chris,
At first I was going to choose to not answer this as it seems a case of "whose Ox is gored" and such polarization tends to devolve into the oft quoted "echo chamber effect" in online forums, but I need to make it clear that I do NOT consider those satisfied with Pulseaudio and/or onboard audio an "ignorant mob".

Maybe I am misinterpreting but that use of "ignorance" seems to have negative connotations more akin to "stupidity" than "ignorance". None of my statements should be assumed to imply any lacking in mental faculties or even validity of choice. The only ignorance involved is simply that of experience. The "Pinto owner" I used in what may be my harshest comment isn't dumb, he simply hasn't ever owned a "Volvo" or "Mercedes" for reference, nor been rear-ended in his "Pinto" and sees through those eyes (or hears with those ears), likes what he has, and finds any fault finding in the device a personal offense. I am quite possibly guilty of that same process within my own experience and POV so I think "No harm. No foul" applies here, and maybe for Good Measure, "Different strokes...."

Last edited by enorbet; 03-30-2018 at 10:17 AM.
 
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Old 03-30-2018, 11:15 AM   #133
jimX86
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Quote:
Originally Posted by enorbet View Post
I don't know how accurate the numbers I quoted actually are in that overall scheme, only as a useful baseline that lends consistency to all such measurements
Thanks, that helps. Establishing a baseline is exactly what I'm trying to do. I'd like to sort out my configuration settings so that it seems less like voodoo. If I manage to find anything helpful, I'll open a different thread.
 
Old 03-30-2018, 01:59 PM   #134
bassmadrigal
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Quote:
Originally Posted by enorbet View Post
The only ignorance involved is simply that of experience. The "Pinto owner" I used in what may be my harshest comment isn't dumb, he simply hasn't ever owned a "Volvo" or "Mercedes" for reference, nor been rear-ended in his "Pinto" and sees through those eyes (or hears with those ears), likes what he has, and finds any fault finding in the device a personal offense.
I'm not sure what you were going for with this, but if it is what I think you meant, I am a previous "Mercedes" owner, now extremely satisfied with my "Pinto".

I used to spend the extra money to get a dedicated sound card. I purchased a SoundBlaster X-Fi PCIe card a few years back. However, maybe it is because my speakers aren't super high-end, maybe the SoundBlaster X-Fi isn't high-end enough, or maybe my hearing isn't what it used to be, but I ended up not noticing a difference when I removed that card and switched to my onboard sound.

I don't doubt the benefits that high-end cards provide, but for many users, they used to use dedicated cards (since onboard sound wasn't even a thing when many of us started with computers), but they have found the ease, simplicity, and no-cost of using onboard to be worth any potential downsides of using onboard. In my case, with what I do on my computer (which, granted, is limited to listening to music, watching youtube, and playing some games -- most everything else is done through my htpc, which is hooked up to my home theater system via hdmi), I found there was no benefit to having a dedicated card since I couldn't hear the difference and I wouldn't utilize any of the additional features the card may provide. So, I don't think mine is a lack of experience

Finally, I'll add that I honestly don't care whether alsa or pulseaudio is the default in Slackware. I understand the benefits both provide. With pulseaudio, I do like the fact I don't have to tinker with alsa when first installed to ensure the right sound card is default, but otherwise, I didn't have to tweak anything beyond that. PA hasn't required any tweaking for me, but I don't use the features it provides (mainly adding additional sound devices to the system and being able to easily switch to them).
 
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Old 03-30-2018, 03:19 PM   #135
hitest
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bassmadrigal View Post
Finally, I'll add that I honestly don't care whether alsa or pulseaudio is the default in Slackware.
I'm also happy with the default software in Slackware. It works for me.
 
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