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How-To: Pulseaudio

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Hadret
Posts: 354
Joined: 2007-07-19 13:04
Location: Berlin

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#41 Post by Hadret »

Anybody using PulseAudio + OSS4 with success? (:

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Parsifal
Posts: 48
Joined: 2010-04-10 09:30
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#42 Post by Parsifal »

Hadret wrote:Anybody using PulseAudio + OSS4 with success? (:
I've just got PulseAudio working on my machine with OSS4, although I still can't work out how to get JACK to see it (and JACK2 doesn't seem to like to work with OSS4 directly, either; I got it to work temporarily by building JACK1 myself from source). I followed this easy guide to make PulseAudio see OSS4:

http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index.php ... Pulseaudio

This page was quite helpful too, in testing the setup (Warning: /dev/urandom is a source of random noise, so make sure your volume is turned way down before you try the first command here!):

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Configurin ... io/Testing

There's also this page, which I found very helpful in getting ALSA to see PulseAudio (since I couldn't get ALSA emulation to work on OSS4, I'm doing it through PulseAudio instead) and with general troubleshooting:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio
Email: steven@steven-mcdonald.id.au
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jlinkels
Posts: 48
Joined: 2008-07-12 14:34
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Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#43 Post by jlinkels »

My apologies if I hi-jack this thread.

I just installed Debian Squeeze, and let Pulse installed instead of removing it like I did on most of my other computers. The 100.000 dollar trick is to install PulseAudioVolume control as well to get it working. I wonder why this is not installed by default when Pulse cripples the audio system. Without PulseAudioVolume there is no way to uncripple it!

Anyway, I have huge problems with Skype 2.2.0.35. I can get Skype to work with Pulse. Not difficult at all. In Control Panel I have assigned my USB headset to the "Communications" application.

In Skype, both system sounds and regular audio are assigned to PulseAudio.

In PulseAudioVolume I have configured the profiles for the various audio hardware present, and I see them correctly in the Output Devices and Input Devices tabs. When I make a test call with Skype, in the Playback and Recording tabs I see Skype being active, and I see the VU meters (progress bars indicating the sound level) moving.

The problem is however that after a random time mostly between 10 and 60 minutes, Skype does stop working with Pulse. I haven't touched anyhting related with sound or Skype, but suddenly Skype doesn't seem to connect to Pulse anymore. Sometimes I can resolve this by starting a test call again, sometimes by restarting Skype, sometimes by restarting KDE.

When I restart KDE, I don't do anything else and Skype is functional again until the next time it stops. Of course, when someone calls me, Skype doesn't work which is both annoying and embarassing.

Anyone seen this before?

jlinkels

sej7278
Posts: 225
Joined: 2011-06-11 17:03

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#44 Post by sej7278 »

i've noticed with skype that i have to make a test sound or test call before i make a call, otherwise i get silence with vu meters bouncing around.

i also noticed at gdm startup where the sound should be, there's a big pause and then the user selector renders.

methinks there's still plenty of bugs in pulseaudio on wheezy, but its certainly better than alsa.

vbrummond
Posts: 4432
Joined: 2010-03-02 01:42

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#45 Post by vbrummond »

Vanessa13 wrote:Do you experience any slowness when using pulse audio. I followed this howto and when i used pulse audio my system was quite slow. The problem came from mplayer rhythmbox and all applications that use audio. For example when i use alsa and esd mplayer takes about 5% cp usage. When i use pulse audio it takes about 50-60%. I tought that the reason for this was that i did something wrong but it was the same in Fedora.
Edit: In answer to your first question: No, pulseaudio has very low cpu usage for me.

Hi Vanessa13! I was just going to supply some more information about pulse I learned here when you posted. Good timing! Try this (just to see if it works). From the debian documentation on pulse:
PLEASE NOTE: PulseAudio's default configuration uses high quality sample
rate conversion that may be overly CPU intensive. If PulseAudio's CPU usage
is unacceptable on your hardware, please change the resample-method option
in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to either src-linear or trivial. See daemon.conf
for more details.
To to this open a root terminal and run this command:

Code: Select all

nano /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
Change the line that says "; resample-method = speex-float-3" to "resample-method = src-linear". It should look something like this:

Code: Select all

; log-backtrace = 0

resample-method = src-linear
; enable-remixing = yes
; enable-lfe-remixing = no

Press CTRL+X to save if you used nano and then Reboot. Does this help?
Last edited by vbrummond on 2011-08-02 10:18, edited 2 times in total.
Always on Debian Testing

vbrummond
Posts: 4432
Joined: 2010-03-02 01:42

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#46 Post by vbrummond »

Here is some more information on pulseaudio that helps me a lot. I will go by problems/solutions sort of basis.

**********

Problem #1: Flash videos 'steal the sound' from other applications.

I fixed this by setting up alsa to use pulseaudio by default. I might need some more testing to see if it actually fixes the problem. To fix:

1. Open a root terminal and create a file called /etc/asound.conf

Code: Select all

nano /etc/asound.conf
2. Add the following into the conf file:

Code: Select all

pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}
3. Press CTRL+X to save the file and then reboot.

**********

Problem #2: Changing volume per application does not work. (For example changing the volume icon in Rhythmbox makes the system volume change).

To fix this just change a setting in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf about flat volumes.

1. Open a root terminal and run:

Code: Select all

nano /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
2. Change the line that says "; flat-volumes = yes" to "flat-volumes = no".

Code: Select all

; enable-lfe-remixing = no

flat-volumes = no

; rlimit-fsize = -1
3. Press CTRL+X to save the file and then reboot.

**********

Problem #3: ALSA problem where some channels in 5.1 surround seem really quiet.

Not strictly pulse related I think the way to fix this is to enable downmixing. I do not have many surround files so some feedback would be helpful. Please note you nee libasound2-plugins package installed for this to work.

1. Open /etc/asound.conf again.

Code: Select all

nano /etc/asound.conf
2. Add the following below the rest:

Code: Select all

pcm.!surround51 {
    type vdownmix
    slave.pcm "default"
}
3. Press CTRL+X to save and reboot.


Hopefully these help some folks! :)
Last edited by vbrummond on 2011-09-05 06:59, edited 1 time in total.
Always on Debian Testing

sej7278
Posts: 225
Joined: 2011-06-11 17:03

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#47 Post by sej7278 »

since the recent pulseaudio updates to wheezy, skype has gone very crackily and still i have silence on boot until i play with alsamixer's 2channel/6channel setting.

sej7278
Posts: 225
Joined: 2011-06-11 17:03

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#48 Post by sej7278 »

Hadret wrote:Working fine on GNOME 2.26 Debian Testing/Unstable. Just wondering - anybody else have same issue, that when system starts, system sound is muted and there's need to launch PulseAudio sound settings to change that? Is there a way to save those settings?
holy moly, i can't believe i have that same issue 2 years since this comment was posted!

secipolla
Posts: 1127
Joined: 2010-06-21 14:20

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#49 Post by secipolla »

I have GNOME 3 and it uses pulseaudio as default (sid version). I installed the system from standard (no desktop) with no recommends so I didn't even install alsa-base. Pulseaudio has been working perfectly, so to speak. The only hurdle I had to jump was that creation of /etc/asound.conf (plus making sure libasound2-plugins was installed) for Flash to work with pulse at the same time as other apps.
The independent volume changing also works fine.

This muted volume isn't alsamixer interfering? Otherwise it may be a GNOME failure, I think.

sej7278
Posts: 225
Joined: 2011-06-11 17:03

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#50 Post by sej7278 »

i'm getting a lot of static lately - pa volume meter for recording is bouncing up and down around 15% when there's nothing being recorded! tried 2 mic's, made no difference.

not sure if this is due to recent pulseaudio updates or kernel-3 in wheezy.

cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
HDA Intel at 0xfbff8000 irq 52

lspci | grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)

edit: its not the kernel as its the same in 2.6.39-2 and 3.0.0-1 so its probably one of the recent pulseaudio/gstreamer updates.

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airborne_rodent
Posts: 14
Joined: 2011-08-25 13:02
Location: France

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#51 Post by airborne_rodent »

Just to clear things out: wheezy doesn't by default have neither pulseaudio or esound (with the latter being un-installable, seems like it's been removed for good). So it's either pulse or 'pure' ALSA (which is the default). Am I right?
--
@sej7278
I have just installed pulse in wheezy (using actually mrbigshot's approach), fully succesfull with no problems and no static (and I have 3.0... kernel).
(\__/)
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sej7278
Posts: 225
Joined: 2011-06-11 17:03

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#52 Post by sej7278 »

airborne_rodent wrote: @sej7278
I have just installed pulse in wheezy (using actually mrbigshot's approach), fully succesfull with no problems and no static (and I have 3.0... kernel).
yes i've posted elsewhere that it seems to be down to alsa not pulse for a change :lol:

still can't fix it after a few alsa/kernel updates though, its meant that i've had to do away with using skype, which could get costly. think it must be drivers for my motherboard/chipset.

rfrayer
Posts: 4
Joined: 2011-08-25 14:57

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#53 Post by rfrayer »

Personally id recomend the home directory as some apps just dont run on pulse

for example heres my psx start file

Code: Select all

#! /bin/bash
mv .asoundrc .asoundrc-tmp
cd /opt/pSX
killall pulseaudio
./pSX
cd ~
mv .asoundrc-tmp .asoundrc
pulseaudio -D

morrigan
Posts: 1
Joined: 2011-10-27 07:55

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#54 Post by morrigan »

this guide really helped; I installed pulseaudio before already, but didn't know about asound.conf/.asoundrc at all and thus didn't have any software mixing (and amarok always occupied the sound device D: )

now, everything's running okish, I just have 3 problems:

-pulseaudio volume manager uses gtk libraries and I want to get rid of them - can you recommend a kde or python based ui for configuring pulse?

-with alsa, I could mute single channels, e.g. the speakers only which were attached to the backpanel while still having sound on my headphones (attached to the front audio output). With pulseaudio, all channels are unified however... Is there a way to split them or mute single ones? Workarounds are appreciated

-when starting, the console output displays something like "pulseaudio configured for per user sessions only [warning]" - anyway to fix this or should I just ignore that?

vbrummond
Posts: 4432
Joined: 2010-03-02 01:42

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#55 Post by vbrummond »

I do not know about the former ones, but I am fairly sure you can safely ignore the last one. I never had any issues.
Always on Debian Testing

LightVision
Posts: 8
Joined: 2009-01-07 09:44
Contact:

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#56 Post by LightVision »

Thank You,


The code

Code: Select all

pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}
worked for me like a charm. I have an Asus K53U and the only solution to get sound was installing pulseaudio. And now, after creating the .asoundrc, I have sound eaven in Iceweasel (adobe flash player - flashplayer plugin non free).
I do web design and PHP/MySQL Programming.

I like to manage my Debian XEN Servers for VPS and web hosting

Alleghenia
Posts: 12
Joined: 2012-02-06 11:15

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#57 Post by Alleghenia »

This *might* be worth a sticky. I've read numerous forums looking for a solution to the very common problem "NO SOUND IN FLASH, YOUTUBE," etc. The information in this thread provided a partial solution, but I was not able to get any sound in my browsers with flash. I upgraded my kernel, compiled alsa from source and I installed all PulseAudio components and utilitities. I installed the flash tarball from adobe. Still, no sound with flash. Then I removed the package flashplugin-nonfree and immediately PulseAudio took the reins and flash worked with sound in my browsers. Seems Pulse has a flash plugin bundled or something like that. I removed the flash plugin with this code:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get autoremove flashplugin-nonfree
I think the flash tarbalI unzipped and installed may still be on the system, but I don't know how to check. Perhaps with some setups, the problem is there are conflicting flash plugins?

shirish
Posts: 845
Joined: 2010-12-08 12:59

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#58 Post by shirish »

Hi all,
I have no audio for last two days. I am on Debian sid. These are the versions of the programs I have :-

Code: Select all

ii  gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio 0.10.31-3               GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio
ii  libao4                  1.1.0-2                 Cross Platform Audio Output Library
ii  libasound2-plugins:amd64 1.0.25-2                ALSA library additional plugins
ii  libgconfmm-2.6-1c2      2.28.0-1                C++ wrappers for GConf (shared library)
ii  libglademm-2.4-1c2a     2.6.7-2                 C++ wrappers for libglade2 (shared library)
ii  libpulse-dev:amd64      2.0-3                   PulseAudio client development headers and libraries
ii  libpulse-mainloop-glib0 2.0-3                   PulseAudio client libraries (glib support)
ii  libpulse0:amd64         2.0-3                   PulseAudio client libraries
ii  paman                   0.9.4-1                 PulseAudio Manager
ii  paprefs                 0.9.10-1                PulseAudio Preferences
ii  pavucontrol             1.0-1                   PulseAudio Volume Control
ii  pavumeter               0.9.3-2                 PulseAudio Volume Meter
ii  pulseaudio              2.0-3                   PulseAudio sound server
ii  pulseaudio-esound-compat 2.0-3                   PulseAudio ESD compatibility layer
ii  pulseaudio-module-bluetooth 2.0-3                   Bluetooth module for PulseAudio sound server
ii  pulseaudio-module-gconf 2.0-3                   GConf module for PulseAudio sound server
ii  pulseaudio-module-jack  2.0-3                   jackd modules for PulseAudio sound server
ii  pulseaudio-module-x11   2.0-3                   X11 module for PulseAudio sound server
ii  pulseaudio-module-zeroconf 2.0-3                   Zeroconf module for PulseAudio sound server
ii  pulseaudio-utils        2.0-3                   Command line tools for the PulseAudio sound server
pulseaudio-module-hal and libpulse-browse0 are not present as this is in sid, guessing these package won't also be in wheezy.

All of the version info. I have given above can be found out by just doing :-

Code: Select all

$ dpkg -l pulseaudio libao4 libpulse-mainloop-glib0 paprefs pulseaudio-module-jack gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-x11 libasound2-plugins libgconfmm-2.6-1c2 paman pulseaudio-module-gconf pulseaudio-utils libglademm-2.4-1c2a libpulse0 pavumeter pulseaudio-esound-compat libpulse-dev pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-zeroconf 
As can be seen these are installed on 64-bit Debian. Now I have already put up a bug-report on the Debian BTS .
Bug # 676652 .

I am using GNOME 3 with gnome-fallback. One of the issues I *think* is that in Applications > System Tools > Preferences > GNOME System Settings > Sound . In Sound for output it says Dummy output and there does not seem a way to change it. I don't think it should be dummy output there, should it ?

Update: Even pavucontrol shows dummy output in output devices. In Show Hardware Output Devices it shows

"No output devices Available" , but how is this possible ?

Code: Select all

$ cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0xfea78000 irq 44

$ lspci | grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
I am using kernel 3.2.0-2-amd64 which was built on June 1 (from Debian sid) and have /etc/asound.conf exactly as shared above by another user as well as in your own guide.
Last edited by shirish on 2012-06-10 09:01, edited 7 times in total.
Intel Dual-Core CPU E5400 (soc 775) @ 2.70GHz, onboard Intel G33, Asus MB P5KPL-AM IN (Intel G31), D-Link 2750u modem+router, 64-bit Debian Testing, Mate 1.26

vbrummond
Posts: 4432
Joined: 2010-03-02 01:42

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#59 Post by vbrummond »

The problem is with alsa. Even with pulse installed my alsa device still shows up.
Always on Debian Testing

shirish
Posts: 845
Joined: 2010-12-08 12:59

Re: How-To: Pulseaudio

#60 Post by shirish »

vbrummond wrote:The problem is with alsa. Even with pulse installed my alsa device still shows up.
Could you elaborate on what that means and what should I be doing ?
Another thing in your guide/post you have written :-

Code: Select all

ps_ax | grep pulseaudio
shouldn't that be :-

Code: Select all

$ ps ax | grep pulseaudio
 3473 ?        S<l    3:36 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
 3501 ?        S      0:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper
24625 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep pulseaudio
Because if I do ps(underscore)ax I get nothing.
Intel Dual-Core CPU E5400 (soc 775) @ 2.70GHz, onboard Intel G33, Asus MB P5KPL-AM IN (Intel G31), D-Link 2750u modem+router, 64-bit Debian Testing, Mate 1.26

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