5 ms·

Am I the only person in the world who has never had anything but a pleasant experience with PulseAudio? The first time I noticed that I was using it, I had alr

by jlgreco 14y ago

Am I the only person in the world who has never had anything but a pleasant experience with PulseAudio? The first time I noticed that I was using it, I had already been using it for a year...

raverbashing 14y ago
Let me ask you some questions then: - How often do you reboot your computer - What audio softwares you use the most For me, PA crashes around once a week (and this is with the latest version I tried), or just plain stops working (like muting the sound, garbled sound, etc) Not to mention the delay that happens while switching songs in mplayer for example. Use ALSA and song switch is instantaneous.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  > - How often do you reboot your computer Once every two or three months, when I remember to apply updates. > - What audio softwares you use the most Only flash (youtube, primarily. Also youtube's html5 player probably, I haven't paid much attention to that) and mplayer. A few years ago, XMMS2. I used to use an XMMS2 client I wrote for music, now I just use some bash scripts and mplayer; I can't say I've noticed any delay while switching songs with mplayer or XMMS2. When I play music from my laptop through my raspberry pi connected to my TV with pusleaudio, then I notice an audio delay. That is the only sore spot pulseaudio has ever presented me.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    Very interesting. I thought some instability may be due to PA staying up for a long time, but apparently not. About the delay, try this: mplayer *mp3 (in a directory with mp3 files, of course), then press >. There should be a significant delay in switching songs (like, 0.5s). Make sure mplayer shows it's using the [Pulse] driver With ALSA this is very fast
- dscrd 14y ago
  "Not to mention the delay that happens while switching songs in mplayer for example. Use ALSA and song switch is instantaneous. " There's a good possibility that this is mplayer's fault more than PA's.
mercurial 14y ago
No issue on a couple of machines. Running with a call to start-pulseaudio-x11 from my .xsession, works fine. I believe running it as a system daemon is not recommended, though.
chao- 14y ago
My most recent attempt to use PulseAudio (as it came via Ubuntu) had the quirk of not activating the headphone jack when something was inserted. It dutifully turned off my speakers, but no sound was available elsewhere. I previously had stock Debian on the machine, and everything was working fine. A half day's effort was put into toying with ALSA configs that Pulse was deferring to for whatever driver choices it made. Dozens of help articles or threads where everyone else in the world could proclaim "Thanks, that fixed it for me!" left me with less functionality than I started with. The only thing Pulse has ever done right for me was was help to record some loopback audio on an otherwise-crippled sound card.
lmm 14y ago
No, there are a decent chunk of users for whom it works fine. Maybe as many as 95%. But there's also a substantial number of users for whom it introduces major problems - which would be more forgiveable (at least to yours truly) if it provided any visible advantages over existing systems. (After a few months of trying to make pulse work I left for FreeBSD, which works beautifully and avoids a lot of linux's change (seemingly) for the sake of change)
elwin 14y ago
I haven't had any recent trouble with it. Back in the early days, it didn't always work well with SDL, but that was fixed years ago. I've been able to crash the daemon with stress tests, but it seems to restart automatically. I can't understand all the dislike of PulseAudio either. It certainly has a nicer API than /dev/dsp.
threedaymonk 14y ago
No, you're not the only one. I'd been forewarned of the awfulness of pulse, but didn't even notice its installation until later, when I discovered all the useful things I could do with it: play music over the office Apple airplay thingy; use two sets of headphones simultaneously; send audio to another computer in the house. Without any typing, searching, or rebooting, I remember OSS and Alsa, and I don't miss either. As far as I can see, it makes Linux audio work like any other computer in this millennium.
armored_mammal 14y ago
I agree with. The only problems I've ever had with it have turned out to either be problems with the actual hardware or problems with the clients, not problems with Pulse Itself. I will admit having a lot of a hate for figuring out which audio 'profile' is which... If you've got the plugs for 7.1 and a normal line in as well as possibly a digital one, they you've probably got 23 choices of profile for your built in audio device. Add in a GPU with HDMI and the NVIDIA driver and you probably get at least another 7+ choices all labeled Nvidia... I find I frequently have to guess multiple times whenever I hook up a TV via HDMI. But it works quite well if you define works as works without adding on any usability riders.
ishbits 14y ago
PulseAudio is good now. It was a different story for me back in 2007/2008 though.

by jlgreco 14y ago

Am I the only person in the world who has never had anything but a pleasant experience with PulseAudio? The first time I noticed that I was using it, I had already been using it for a year...

raverbashing 14y ago

Let me ask you some questions then: - How often do you reboot your computer - What audio softwares you use the most For me, PA crashes around once a week (and this is with the latest version I tried), or just plain stops working (like muting the sound, garbled sound, etc) Not to mention the delay that happens while switching songs in mplayer for example. Use ALSA and song switch is instantaneous.

jlgreco 14y ago
> - How often do you reboot your computer Once every two or three months, when I remember to apply updates. > - What audio softwares you use the most Only flash (youtube, primarily. Also youtube's html5 player probably, I haven't paid much attention to that) and mplayer. A few years ago, XMMS2. I used to use an XMMS2 client I wrote for music, now I just use some bash scripts and mplayer; I can't say I've noticed any delay while switching songs with mplayer or XMMS2. When I play music from my laptop through my raspberry pi connected to my TV with pusleaudio, then I notice an audio delay. That is the only sore spot pulseaudio has ever presented me.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Very interesting. I thought some instability may be due to PA staying up for a long time, but apparently not. About the delay, try this: mplayer *mp3 (in a directory with mp3 files, of course), then press >. There should be a significant delay in switching songs (like, 0.5s). Make sure mplayer shows it's using the [Pulse] driver With ALSA this is very fast
dscrd 14y ago
"Not to mention the delay that happens while switching songs in mplayer for example. Use ALSA and song switch is instantaneous. " There's a good possibility that this is mplayer's fault more than PA's.

mercurial 14y ago

No issue on a couple of machines. Running with a call to start-pulseaudio-x11 from my .xsession, works fine. I believe running it as a system daemon is not recommended, though.

chao- 14y ago

My most recent attempt to use PulseAudio (as it came via Ubuntu) had the quirk of not activating the headphone jack when something was inserted. It dutifully turned off my speakers, but no sound was available elsewhere. I previously had stock Debian on the machine, and everything was working fine. A half day's effort was put into toying with ALSA configs that Pulse was deferring to for whatever driver choices it made. Dozens of help articles or threads where everyone else in the world could proclaim "Thanks, that fixed it for me!" left me with less functionality than I started with. The only thing Pulse has ever done right for me was was help to record some loopback audio on an otherwise-crippled sound card.

lmm 14y ago

No, there are a decent chunk of users for whom it works fine. Maybe as many as 95%. But there's also a substantial number of users for whom it introduces major problems - which would be more forgiveable (at least to yours truly) if it provided any visible advantages over existing systems. (After a few months of trying to make pulse work I left for FreeBSD, which works beautifully and avoids a lot of linux's change (seemingly) for the sake of change)

elwin 14y ago

I haven't had any recent trouble with it. Back in the early days, it didn't always work well with SDL, but that was fixed years ago. I've been able to crash the daemon with stress tests, but it seems to restart automatically. I can't understand all the dislike of PulseAudio either. It certainly has a nicer API than /dev/dsp.

threedaymonk 14y ago

No, you're not the only one. I'd been forewarned of the awfulness of pulse, but didn't even notice its installation until later, when I discovered all the useful things I could do with it: play music over the office Apple airplay thingy; use two sets of headphones simultaneously; send audio to another computer in the house. Without any typing, searching, or rebooting, I remember OSS and Alsa, and I don't miss either. As far as I can see, it makes Linux audio work like any other computer in this millennium.

armored_mammal 14y ago

I agree with. The only problems I've ever had with it have turned out to either be problems with the actual hardware or problems with the clients, not problems with Pulse Itself. I will admit having a lot of a hate for figuring out which audio 'profile' is which... If you've got the plugs for 7.1 and a normal line in as well as possibly a digital one, they you've probably got 23 choices of profile for your built in audio device. Add in a GPU with HDMI and the NVIDIA driver and you probably get at least another 7+ choices all labeled Nvidia... I find I frequently have to guess multiple times whenever I hook up a TV via HDMI. But it works quite well if you define works as works without adding on any usability riders.

ishbits 14y ago

PulseAudio is good now. It was a different story for me back in 2007/2008 though.