3 ms·

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

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..

dfc 13y ago
What headphones do you use? I think a lot of this is just a difference in workflow. I don't think I have ever intentionally had two programs playing sound at the same time. NoScript/RequestPolicy/Adblock essentially mute flashplugin-nonfree for me. The only places flash runs are places where I want the sound.
- darklajid 13y ago
  The headphones do not matter, USB headphones were picked as examples because they're 'sound cards' usually. You could substitute 'moving from HDMI output to your speakers' or something. It's just about the ability of migrating running audio between devices, something I'm regularly doing. Sound at the same time: Happens regularly for me. I'm listening to music and some IM client runs. I could mute that client (in the client itself) or .. reduce the volume of that one application (in PA). NoScript and RequestPolicy were too much of a hassle to me in the past tbh. I regularly end up with a braindead/moronic website playing some random video. Muting flash while I look for the offending tab makes me a much saner person.
  - dfc 13y ago
    Were the headphones a contrived example? I was just curious about the headphones and how they performed. Most of the usb headphones I have seen sounded like garbage. I really think a lot of it is workflow. When I thought about that AOL new IM noise I cringed. I like my bells to be visual.
- roberto 13y ago
  You don't necessarily have to have two simultaneous sound sources. For example, if I want to connect a bluetooth headphone to listen to music, without PA I would need to edit my alsarc file and restart Firefox so it picks up the new sound card.
makomk 13y ago
I find that with the default PulseAudio config, flat volumes make using headphones a pain because the same volume level means very different things on different hardware - so if I'd last used an application on speakers, I'd get deafened if it launched on headphones. I guess spending $$$ on USB-attached headphones would partially solve that problem by stopping apps from automatically switching to the headphones, but for me it'd be a rather expensive and inferior workaround.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  I use an ALSA config for this on a multichannel sound card. I plug my headphones into the rear port, speakers into the front port, and turn down the rear volume with alsamixer.
eikenberry 13y ago
> Those are 'soundcards' and switching sound between those wasn't really possible without PA. It is possible. It just requires a manual (scripted) process of changing the default sound devices in your .asoundrc. Not that everyone would want to do that, but it is possible.
asveikau 13y ago
I do this by symlinking a different file to ~/.asoundrc and restarting whatever process is producing audio. Crude but it works. In contrast the time I tried to set up pulse for this purpose I could not get it to produce any sound at all from any output device (everything working fine when stuff is talking directly to alsa).
e12e 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    > 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-output-multiple-sound.html http://slack4dummies.blogspot.no/2012/02/alsa-multiple-outpu... [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.

dfc 13y ago

What headphones do you use? I think a lot of this is just a difference in workflow. I don't think I have ever intentionally had two programs playing sound at the same time. NoScript/RequestPolicy/Adblock essentially mute flashplugin-nonfree for me. The only places flash runs are places where I want the sound.

darklajid 13y ago
The headphones do not matter, USB headphones were picked as examples because they're 'sound cards' usually. You could substitute 'moving from HDMI output to your speakers' or something. It's just about the ability of migrating running audio between devices, something I'm regularly doing. Sound at the same time: Happens regularly for me. I'm listening to music and some IM client runs. I could mute that client (in the client itself) or .. reduce the volume of that one application (in PA). NoScript and RequestPolicy were too much of a hassle to me in the past tbh. I regularly end up with a braindead/moronic website playing some random video. Muting flash while I look for the offending tab makes me a much saner person.
- dfc 13y ago
  Were the headphones a contrived example? I was just curious about the headphones and how they performed. Most of the usb headphones I have seen sounded like garbage. I really think a lot of it is workflow. When I thought about that AOL new IM noise I cringed. I like my bells to be visual.
roberto 13y ago
You don't necessarily have to have two simultaneous sound sources. For example, if I want to connect a bluetooth headphone to listen to music, without PA I would need to edit my alsarc file and restart Firefox so it picks up the new sound card.

makomk 13y ago

I find that with the default PulseAudio config, flat volumes make using headphones a pain because the same volume level means very different things on different hardware - so if I'd last used an application on speakers, I'd get deafened if it launched on headphones. I guess spending $$$ on USB-attached headphones would partially solve that problem by stopping apps from automatically switching to the headphones, but for me it'd be a rather expensive and inferior workaround.

nitrogen 13y ago
I use an ALSA config for this on a multichannel sound card. I plug my headphones into the rear port, speakers into the front port, and turn down the rear volume with alsamixer.

eikenberry 13y ago

> Those are 'soundcards' and switching sound between those wasn't really possible without PA. It is possible. It just requires a manual (scripted) process of changing the default sound devices in your .asoundrc. Not that everyone would want to do that, but it is possible.

asveikau 13y ago

I do this by symlinking a different file to ~/.asoundrc and restarting whatever process is producing audio. Crude but it works. In contrast the time I tried to set up pulse for this purpose I could not get it to produce any sound at all from any output device (everything working fine when stuff is talking directly to alsa).

e12e 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > 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-output-multiple-sound.html http://slack4dummies.blogspot.no/2012/02/alsa-multiple-outpu... [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.