Arch Linux

sylvite

Member

Registered: 2014-03-16

Posts: 16

Steam games & Pulseaudio 6.0/7.0

I've had a problem with audio in Steam games ever since Pulseaudio was recently upgraded to 7.0 (about a week ago).

If I upgrade all Pulseaudio packages to 7.0-x (including lib32-*), I have audio in chromium and vlc and every other application that I've tried except steam games. Even store trailers and videos have audio-- it's only the games that don't.

If I downgrade all Pulseaudio packages back to 6.0, audio in games in steam work fine.

~ % pacman -Q | grep pulse
    lib32-libcanberra-pulse 0.30-4
    lib32-libpulse 6.0-1
    libcanberra-pulse 0.30-5
    libpulse 6.0-2
    pulseaudio 6.0-2
    pulseaudio-alsa 2-3
    pulseaudio-bluetooth 6.0-2
    pulseaudio-equalizer 6.0-2
    pulseaudio-gconf 6.0-2

I've up/down-graded PA several times trying to debug this for the past week.
I've run PA with --log-level=debug, and pasted the logs here:
  PA 6.0
  PA 7.0

In each log, I started steam, then started one game, the closed the game and closed steam.

In PA 6.0, pavucontrol shows the games audio coming from an app called "FMOD Ex App", but in PA 7.0, they come through "ALSA Playback":

6.0

    I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Created input 0 "Mixer Stream" on alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo with sample spec s16le 2ch 48000Hz and channel map front-left,front-right
    I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     media.name = "Mixer Stream"
    I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.name = "FMOD Ex App"

  7.0   
    I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Created input 0 "ALSA Playback" on alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo with sample spec s16le 2ch 48000Hz and channel map front-left,front-right
    I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     media.name = "ALSA Playback"
    I: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.name = "ALSA plug-in [dontstarve_steam]"

What is "FMOD Ex App"? Why does PA 6.0 use it and PA 7.0 not use it?

I've also tried using `SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa steam`, which I've seen in numerous forum messages and other places, but it had no effect on getting audio working where it doesn't work.

smudge

Member

Registered: 2011-03-20

Posts: 158

Re: Steam games & Pulseaudio 6.0/7.0

Don't Starve uses FMOD for its sound so "FMOD Ex App" is probably something to do with that.

Are lib32-alsa-lib and lib32-alsa-plugins installed?

Have you seen: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/St … 27t_Starve?

sylvite

Member

Registered: 2014-03-16

Posts: 16

Re: Steam games & Pulseaudio 6.0/7.0

I didn't see this game's specific entry on the wiki. Thank you for that. I was missing one thing, but since audio worked fine in PA 6.0, it didn't occur to me that a library would be missing when upgrading PA. And the game also worked fine without the libcurl* instructions on the wiki, unrelated to audio.

Anyway, I do now have audio in Don't Starve under PA 7.0.

The purpose of the post, though, wasn't to say that only one game wasn't working. There's several that the audio quit working when upgrading PA. I guess I'll go through each game one at a time and double-check the game-specific sections. I already notice from that page that there's nothing about Portal 2 or Half-Life 2 audio.

Last edited by sylvite (2015-10-06 04:28:13)

mrshr3d

Member

Registered: 2015-01-12

Posts: 2

Re: Steam games & Pulseaudio 6.0/7.0

Don't Starve uses FMOD for its sound so "FMOD Ex App" is probably something to do with that.

Are lib32-alsa-lib and lib32-alsa-plugins installed?

Have you seen: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/St … 27t_Starve?

Just to add to the conversation about audio issues when trying to play Don't Starve, and Don't Starve Together.

The issue I was having, was with simultaneously running Mangler for player chat and also getting sound from the games (Don't Starve and Sir, You Are Being Hunted [works fine in Unepic though...]).  I would get sound in one but not the other, depending on which one was run first.

Adding the launch options for NO SOUND in that provided URL for the affected games fixed my issue, thanks very much.
I was looking at posts about Mangler but could not find anything recent (was referring to mangler-svn and manually configuring the pkgbuild to use alsa, but mangler-svn is no longer available in AUR).

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl

Member

Registered: 2010-07-09

Posts: 56

Re: Steam games & Pulseaudio 6.0/7.0

Misread. Cannot remove post. Should the thread not be marked as solved?

Last edited by Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl (2015-10-13 21:32:19)