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#1 2009-09-25 21:47:33

nTia89
Banned
From: varese, italy
Registered: 2008-12-22
Posts: 1,230

why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

hi to all,

who use PA and why....

who don't use PA and why.....


+pc: custom | AMD Opteron 175 | nForce4 Ultra | 2GB ram DDR400 | nVidia 9800GT 1GB | ArchLinux x86_64 w/ openbox
+laptop: Apple | MacBook (2,1) | 2GB ram | Mac OS X 10.4 -> DIED
+ultrabook: Dell | XPS 13 (9343) | 8GB ram | 256GB ssd | FullHD display | Windows 8.1 64bit ArchLinux x86_64 w/ Gnome

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#2 2009-09-25 21:48:16

wonder
Developer
From: Bucharest, Romania
Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 5,941
Website

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

hi,
i don't use PA because alsa works for me very well big_smile

Last edited by wonder (2009-09-25 21:48:40)


Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

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#3 2009-09-25 22:11:18

Jamie
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2009-09-21
Posts: 107

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

wonder wrote:

hi,
i don't use PA because alsa works for me very well big_smile

I second that wonder wink.
I do a lot of "home studio recording" in Linux and other distributions I've used give all these instruction about disabling PulseAudio and using Jack.  I actually never had to do any of that as all the recording I do is done with a GNX4 (which acts like an external USB soundcard) which I set up to work with Jack.


Thanks,
Jamie

archlinux x86_64

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#4 2009-09-25 22:22:31

flamelab
Member
From: Athens, Hellas (Greece)
Registered: 2007-12-26
Posts: 2,160

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

+1.

I won't use it until it gets mature and tested by the Ubuntu/Fedora/other users. ALSA is OK by itself for now, it doesn't need any extra layer (for now).

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#5 2009-09-25 22:25:16

oni5115
Member
Registered: 2009-01-10
Posts: 38

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I use pulse audio mostly since you can indepedantly switch audio levels of various applications.  It came in handy for playing WoW, listening to music, and talking on Ventrilo all at once.

Other than that specific scenario though, I don't really see much of a difference.

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#6 2009-09-25 23:12:31

sctincman
Member
From: CO (USA)
Registered: 2009-04-08
Posts: 85

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I've set it up myself because it seemed relatively simple and could function as a drop in replacement for esd (which I think it's slated to replace)

I'm not an audiophile, but haven't noticed any improvment or slow-down tongue

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#7 2009-09-25 23:29:12

damjan
Member
Registered: 2006-05-30
Posts: 448

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I started using pulseaudio to avoid Firefox - or to be more precise Flash - blocking the audio device when it fails. That was f*cking up all my other programs.

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#8 2009-09-25 23:29:52

ammon
Member
Registered: 2008-12-11
Posts: 413

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I like to listen to music and play video game. It was sometime slugish with alsa alone. So i tried pulse and it is ok now. I doesent bother me, so its only good of it.

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#9 2009-09-25 23:35:18

AngryKoala
Member
Registered: 2009-01-22
Posts: 197

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I used to use PA because of its feature set.  It allowed me to switch any audio stream to any output (ie speakers to headset) at any time.  However, now I use OSS for two reasons.  1.  I like OSS's principles in keeping their development simple yet efficient, and I personally do not believe ALSA did the same or at least as well in terms of making things easy for devs. 2.  PA is an addon to ALSA, which some say reduces latency, but I try to steer clear of addons just because of their nature to make things more complex.  3.  PA occasionally bumps my sound up to 250% and I get a heart attack.

I used PA for about 5 months and it worked well.  It was a little buggy at times depending on the app, but my biggest gripe was that it shot my sound up 250% occasionally.

OSS worked wonders for my sound being pure and never buggy in any app (I used amarok, goggles music manager, vlc...).  So, simply put, I just like the way OSS development went more than alsa, and therefore pa.

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#10 2009-09-25 23:37:49

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I will only use pulse when I'm forced to do so, for now I just use OSSv4 and I'm happy.

Like flamelab says, I'll let someone else be the guinea pig on this one tongue


R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

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#11 2009-09-25 23:40:47

Teoulas
Member
From: Athens, Greece
Registered: 2009-03-21
Posts: 70

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I like having the extra volume control for each application and setting each channel (5.1 setup) is necessary, sometimes. In general, it's working fine here and since gnome (my main desktop) uses it... why not? I had to recompile a few packages (mpd, vlc, gnome) to enable pulseaudio support, but the switch from plain ALSA was painless.

Last edited by Teoulas (2009-09-25 23:42:09)

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#12 2009-09-26 00:11:38

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I use Pulse, because alsa with the software mixer sounds horrible, and the JACK alsa plug didn't work with some of my apps (static, urgh). I also use JACK at the same time, which is why the problems with module-jack-sink/source irk me so much.

Per-app volumes is nice, automatic bluetooth support (devs work closely with bluez devs) is nicer.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
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#13 2009-09-26 00:44:57

whoops
Member
Registered: 2009-03-19
Posts: 891

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I was very happy, when I discovered pulseaudio, because I finally had good audio quality.

+) by far the easiest to set up; "almost windows" wink
+) might even work out of the box with a combination of programs you couldn't get to work right all at once with alsa/oss even if your life depended on it
+) nice network / mixing / misc features most people don't need but some might like
-) Gnaws on your CPU.
-) If you're out of luck, it might even swallow it. With my soundcard/setup p.E., no matter what I do, pulseaudio needs 85% CPU (core2duo@2x1.86) to have any kind of audio played.

Using alsa now, had a hard time getting everything to work fine, but now I can have 4x4 videos play at once and it barely takes CPU at all.

Last edited by whoops (2009-09-26 00:45:28)

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#14 2009-09-26 10:16:48

nTia89
Banned
From: varese, italy
Registered: 2008-12-22
Posts: 1,230

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

thanks to all

i'm thinking to install PA in my Gnome-Arch install because ESD is ancient, PA is easily installable and gnome is PA fully compatible .....


+pc: custom | AMD Opteron 175 | nForce4 Ultra | 2GB ram DDR400 | nVidia 9800GT 1GB | ArchLinux x86_64 w/ openbox
+laptop: Apple | MacBook (2,1) | 2GB ram | Mac OS X 10.4 -> DIED
+ultrabook: Dell | XPS 13 (9343) | 8GB ram | 256GB ssd | FullHD display | Windows 8.1 64bit ArchLinux x86_64 w/ Gnome

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#15 2009-09-26 12:24:00

Babets
Member
Registered: 2008-02-07
Posts: 47

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I suggest you to read a couple of very interesting famous articles tongue
The first, the second smile

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#16 2009-09-26 12:30:24

ammon
Member
Registered: 2008-12-11
Posts: 413

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

@whoops

85% cpu for PA? OMG. That is not normal... It jumps to max 1.8% only when starting some new process that uses it. Otherwise it is well under 1%.
You should re-check your settings and send bug report.

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#17 2009-09-26 12:43:07

DonVla
Member
From: Bonn, Germany
Registered: 2007-06-07
Posts: 997

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

nTia89 wrote:

hi to all,

who use PA and why....

who don't use PA and why.....

I used PA for some days and had major sound delays when playing video. But maybe this changed.
I like the PA idea of controlling the volume of each application through a centralized interface.
Ubuntu uses it and it seems to be quite reliable, at least they still use it.

PS: Though bin32 applications (eg bin32-realplayer) do not work out-of-the-box or at all - I haven't tried so hard. And some applications still interfere: one has no sound if another is running (i haven't tried too hard to fix it either).

Last edited by DonVla (2009-09-26 12:45:41)

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#18 2009-09-26 12:43:14

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

Babets wrote:

I suggest you to read a couple of very interesting famous articles tongue
The first, the second smile

Famous but misguided. Just cause he's got nice coloured boxes doesn't mean much. The 'mess' he refers to is the default sound-system for the fastest growing noob-friendly distro of all time. The reason was simply that ESD->Alsa was buggy in some (many) systems, and OSSv4 wasn't complete (still isn't, honestly, tried USB sound cards recently?. What about bluetooth headsets?).

I went through all the initial Pulse problems with its first release on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). Most of Pulse's bad rep comes from that period, but any new users coming in now on 9.04/9.10 would most likely not have pulse-related problems due to the fixes that have gone in since then. (They'll have other problems, and probably end up in Arch, but that's beside the point).

Like everything else on the internet, take those blog posts (and this forum post) with a large helping of salt.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
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#19 2009-09-26 12:44:36

litemotiv
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2008-08-01
Posts: 5,026

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

i'm thinking about installing pulseaudio on a NAS with usb soundcard attached to a hifi set, and then streaming all audio on the lan to that NAS so every pc can play through the hifi speakers. this should be possible with pulseaudio (i think?), but so far the time/effort has kept me away from trying..


ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ

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#20 2009-09-26 14:01:32

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

Well the network audio thing, usb and bluetooth support may be nice but it is alsa which provides the actual drivers to the hardware (and that can be quite broken from time to time).

For most users the only thing that matters is good quality audio and something that just works and OSSv4 provides that for most of the cases out of the box. There is some usb support in OSSv4 (though I know it's not a very wide support) and no support for bluetooth that I know of (ok it looses on the usb and bluetooth support). The other touted advantages of pulse are also provided by OSSv4, read per app volume control and no output device hijacking.

I admit that some features provided by pulse are quite nice but how many users will really need to use it? Besides pulse relies on alsa (or other system that provides the actual access to the hardware) and as far as I've seen some of the problems pulse suffers from are caused by problems in alsa drivers, that makes it two layers of possible problems and resource usage. I've been using arch for a little over one year now (I think) and

I've been using OSSv4 all this time with zero problems from the start as opposed to alsa that refused to cooperate from the start, I want to give pulse a try because sooner or later most programs will use it but I just can't accept the fact that for the my usage profile the only thing pulse will bring right now would be compatibility with a very small group of apps (like the newest skype) and lots of duplicated functionality.


R00KIE
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#21 2009-09-26 16:14:13

techprophet
Member
Registered: 2008-05-13
Posts: 209

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I don't use PulseAudio because I had bad experiences with it on ubuntu (which have since been resolved i've heard.)

And ALSA works fine for me.

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#22 2009-09-26 16:15:04

whoops
Member
Registered: 2009-03-19
Posts: 891

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

ammon wrote:

@whoops

85% cpu for PA? OMG. That is not normal... It jumps to max 1.8% only when starting some new process that uses it. Otherwise it is well under 1%.
You should re-check your settings and send bug report.

[slightly OT]
There were many bug reports and forum threads with people experimenting with the settings... This is an issue disappeared and reappeared a few times with updates (the alternative was "crackling sound" most of the time, one version worked fine and when it broke again I gave up), mostly for cheap onboard cards, especially when using more than 2 channels/speakers. Had it with a few Debian machines... had it on arch, had it on Ubuntu boot cd. Maybe this got fixed in the meantime and won't come back, but now I'm fine with alsa anyway. 

Still, even when it was working, it did take about 10 times as much CPU with 5.1 than ALSA did (with crappy soundcards). And about four times ALSA without upmixing.

Last edited by whoops (2009-09-26 16:17:15)

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#23 2009-09-26 16:37:37

DonVla
Member
From: Bonn, Germany
Registered: 2007-06-07
Posts: 997

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

does it make sense to switch from alsa to oss4?
is it a "big" step? much work?

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#24 2009-09-26 19:41:11

ugkbunb
Member
Registered: 2009-02-26
Posts: 227

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

I don't use PulseAudio because I found it a headache to get all apps to be able to play sound together and even when I did manage to accomplish that feat...music when played through amarok would be scratchy or staticy for the first few seconds of playback.... I read on a mailinglist on pulseaudio that PulseAudio requires a low-latency desktop and he suggests installing a realtime kernel with 1000mhz and preempt enabled... Even after doing that... it would help a bit on playback but I still would notice the scratchy sounds every once in awhile. I read a thread about trying out OSSv4 so I purged my system of PulseAudio and lo and behold everything worked right out of the box with great sound quality i.e. no staticy scratchy playback.

DonVla wrote:

does it make sense to switch from alsa to oss4?
is it a "big" step? much work?

nope... it was quite easy actually

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OSS#Installing

Last edited by ugkbunb (2009-09-26 19:42:08)

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#25 2009-09-26 23:15:34

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: why i should to switch off to PulseAudio ?

R00KIE wrote:

Well the network audio thing, usb and bluetooth support may be nice but it is alsa which provides the actual drivers to the hardware (and that can be quite broken from time to time).

And coincidentally, Alsa has the widest set of hardware drivers available for Linux...

R00KIE wrote:

For most users the only thing that matters is good quality audio and something that just works and OSSv4 provides that for most of the cases out of the box. There is some usb support in OSSv4 (though I know it's not a very wide support) and no support for bluetooth that I know of (ok it looses on the usb and bluetooth support). The other touted advantages of pulse are also provided by OSSv4, read per app volume control and no output device hijacking.

I admit that some features provided by pulse are quite nice but how many users will really need to use it? Besides pulse relies on alsa (or other system that provides the actual access to the hardware) and as far as I've seen some of the problems pulse suffers from are caused by problems in alsa drivers, that makes it two layers of possible problems and resource usage. I've been using arch for a little over one year now (I think) and I've been using OSSv4 all this time with zero problems from the start as opposed to alsa that refused to cooperate from the start, I want to give pulse a try because sooner or later most programs will use it but I just can't accept the fact that for the my usage profile the only thing pulse will bring right now would be compatibility with a very small group of apps (like the newest skype) and lots of duplicated functionality.

I would argue that Pulse also provides good quality audio out of the box. The problem with alsa's audio is in their software mixed (dmix), and that is required on most machines to get multi-input sound. Pulseaudio does its own mixing and bypasses dmix, so there won't be a sound difference between Pulse and OSSv4.

However, the difference at the present moment is not very crucial. Whatever works for all your usage patterns is fine, as with most things in Arch.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
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