

PulseAudio 5.0 - conductor
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-discuss/2014-March/020128.html

======
dfc
Better release notes:
[http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5....](http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5.0/)

Personally Pulseaudio has always been " _that thing that fixes all those
problems I never had with ALSA._ " I realize there is more to it than that but
I have never really understood what pulseaudio does for me a casual sound
user? Sound on my computer is exclusively produced by mpd, vlc and
flashplugin-nonfree and I do not remember the last time I used a microphone on
a linux machine.[1] I have browsed through the docs a couple of times but I
have never figured out why, let alone how, I would want to change anything.

The only thing about Pulseaudio that I am confident of is that it is less
overkill than jackd for my use cases. What am I missing?

[1]: I guess I have used the microphone a couple of times but it was always
because I thought I would try Skype again. But this always resulted in a ton
of wasted time with 32bit libraries and an avalanche of qt dependencies. I
would get skype to work but I used it so rarely that by the time I needed it
again I had to go through all the nonsense all over again.

~~~
darklajid
You're missing hardware - and use cases.

I tend to like headphones that are connected via USB. Those are 'soundcards'
and switching sound between those wasn't really possible without PA.

I often like to look at the output sources and mute (or reduce in volume) some
sources, leaving the rest intact.

My use cases really just revolve around those. Works fine for me. flashplugin-
nonfree is a nice example for something to mute, btw..

~~~
e12e
I'm not sure if it is entirely fair to criticise alsa for lacking (g)ui --
after all there was a major shift to pulse audio, and pretty much all relevant
ui projects (eg: gnome) basically went: use pulse or forget about easily
switching audio i/o. It has very little to with alsa "as such". After finally
tiring of how pulse-audio kept introducing lag and skips in my audio, I found
alsa-heaven with:

    
    
        $ cat ~.asoundrc
        pcm.nvidia { type hw; card NVidia; }
        ctl.nvidia { type hw; card NVidia; }
        pcm.usb { type hw; card DAC; }
        ctl.usb { type hw; card DAC; }
    
        #pcm.!default pcm.usb
        ctl.!default ctl.usb
    
        #dmix for software mixing? http://alsa.opensrc.org/Dmix
        pcm.!default {
          type plug
          slave.pcm "dmixer"
        }
        pcm.dmixer {
          type dmix
          ipc_key 1024 # Must be unique
          slave {
            pcm "hw:DAC"
          }
        }
    

Note that my usb dac doesn't do hardware mixing, but alsa handles that fine (I
can watch a movie and play audio at the same time, yai!).

In general I feel that Linux audio seems _worse_ now than in the 1.3 days --
but I'm not sure easy gui of pulse audio makes up for crappy resource
utilization and general complexity of piping some binary data to a /dev/audio
device.

I'd low to see something like jack with a easy-to-use ui and soft realtime
(and optional network transparency) -- but right now it seems a little to hard
to use for me (but that could be my usb dac that isn't quite a sound card, and
reportedly has pretty crappy (alsa) drivers).

~~~
darklajid
You know more about alsa than I do. Can you, with this setup:

\- reduce single input streams (mute that one flash video) in volume?

\- can you switch between usb and internal card without restarting an
application? Use case: You're playing a game, wife enters the room, requests
that you put on headphones. Trivial with PA (even with USB headphones), what
about your pure alsa workflow?

~~~
e12e
> reduce single input streams (mute that one flash video) in volume

Not easily, as far as I know. What is the use-case for this, btw? Muting flash
on sites other than youtube and the like (as youtube has a volume control for
every video)? I use noscript and flashblock -- so I generally only see (hear)
flash I want.

> switch between usb and internal card without restarting an application?

I haven't tried (no need -- I _only_ use my dac for audio). Alsamixer allows
you to set volume for each device, so perhaps one could set up a virtual
device so that audio goes to both cards by default, and then you could mute
one or the other there? Take a look at this thing I found:

[http://slack4dummies.blogspot.no/2012/02/alsa-multiple-
outpu...](http://slack4dummies.blogspot.no/2012/02/alsa-multiple-output-
multiple-sound.html)

[edit: For switching outputs/cards "manually" via using separate .asoundrc
files, not the guide linked above] I _think_ restarting audio is enough (but
that would typically not help for games, but should be fine for video (stop-
start playback). [edit2: The app needs to close the audio device for such
manual shifting to work -- YMMV]

I only ended up with this after enough frustration with pa that I went and
looked up how to do (basic) alsa config. The documentation could benefit from
more (hand holding) guides, and a proper (g)ui wouldn't hurt. But when you see
it as a list of inputs and outputs (both plugins and devices) -- slaves and
masters -- most setups are possible.

------
hansjorg
> This issue is yet to be resolved with the BlueZ developers

Anyone know the back story on the missing HSP/HFP support in BlueZ 5? Patent
related?

Edit: it's mentioned briefly in the BlueZ 5 release notes
([http://www.bluez.org/release-of-bluez-5-0/](http://www.bluez.org/release-of-
bluez-5-0/))

------
thomasahle
'Changes at a Glance' from the release notes:
[http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5....](http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/5.0/)

* BlueZ 5 support (A2DP only)

* Reimplementation of the tunnel modules

* Native log target support for systemd-journal

* Small changes here and there

* Many bug fixes

Personally it's probably been a year since last time I had to think about
pulseaudio, which is the way I prefer it to stay.

~~~
makomk
Amongst other things, I think they're finally reverting the half-baked patch
in 4.0 that broke various resamplers. Wonder which of the changes will cause
me problems this time around...

------
upofadown
I note that bug 62588 still remains unfixed:

[https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62588](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62588)

This particular bug was known as 741 back in 2009:

[http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-
bugs/2009-D...](http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-
bugs/2009-December/003553.html)

Is it perhaps the case that Pulseaudio is an example of a complex program
where the original developers have gone elsewhere? All the easy bugs get
fixed, the ones that require deep knowledge remain forever.

------
rainmaking
I hope it doesn't suck.

~~~
panzi
Which would be a new feature. For me it only ever caused troubles (sound
errors and huge latency and you can't get rid of it in Fedora). The only
useful thing about it is that you can control the volume of each program even
if the program itself does not provide such an control (some games are crappy
like that). But that hardy justifies all the trouble it causes.

~~~
dscrd
Interesting. My experience with PA ever since version 2.0 has been that sound
just magically works. Like it has been on Windows and OS X for years now.

Another embarrasment for a Linux user is finally over. I think the last one to
go is X11 => Wayland.

~~~
panzi
That was my experience with Knoppix around 2001. Sound did just work (starting
at early boot stages!). Then came PA and messed it all up.

------
buster
What's the major difference to 4.0?

~~~
FooBarWidget
The 5.0 release notes are linked right from that announcement...

