Arch Linux

shallpion

Member

Registered: 2009-12-12

Posts: 65

should I start pulseaudio automatically after logging into KDE?

Hi, thanks for reading my questions. I just did a new install of KDE 4.9.1 on my computer and I use gstreamer as backend. 
I have only onboard sound card

 aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC889A Analog [ALC889A Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC889A Digital [ALC889A Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

At first I didn't have pulseaudio installed and in "Phonon KDE control module-->Device Preference" I can see
a listing including

HDA Intel, ALC889A Analog (Default Audio Device)

and everything works normaly. However after I read wiki page
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio
I suppose I should install pulseaudio as well. So I installed pulseaudio and pulseaudio-alsa. After restarting my computer now I have only one

 Pulseaudio Sound Server 

left in the phonon setting page. So far everything has been working normally.

Then later I noticed that there are two script

Start the PulseAudio Sound System
Start the PulseAudio Sound System with KDE Routing Policy

disabled in System Setting-->Startup. They basically just run

start-pulseaudio-x11      start-pulseaudio-kde

commands

As a test I enabled them and after restart KDE desktop now the only one option in phonon page is changed into

Built-in Audio Analog Stereo

Still, everything works normally and I didn't notice any change.

The Pulseaudio wiki page contains many information but I am still feeling a little confused. What is the difference between enabling and disabling the two autostart scripts, and what is the recommended action?

Thanks.