PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

goll · 2011-05-02 11:52:11

Ok, so last night i updated my system, I'm using awesomewm and i'm trying to keep everything minimal. That being said, I *really* dislike being forced to install PulseAudio.

The moment the update was finished, PulseAudio started beating my audio system up like it owed him money.

I was fortunate enough to catch a thread on the forum before i restarted my system, because if i had, i wouldn't be able to log on, check here:

can't start awesome after today's update

PulseAudio decided it doesn't like mpd which has worked *flawlessly* for a couple of years, it took me about 10 seconds to get to my desktop after logging in, see this thread:

Problem logging in to gnome with pulseaudio + mpd

Now I can only play one music source at a time, for instance, if i'm listening to some music using mpd + ario or clementine i can no longer watch a youtube clip with sound.

Oh, and i should mention that i have serious sound latency while playing youtube clips, when i decide to press pause in the middle of a clip it takes the system around 1 second to actually stop the sound after stopping the video playback.

Where is the KISS principle in all of this? It took me a couple of hours to hack everything so at least i have *some* sound working, but it's far from the state it was before PulseAudio came along.

Is there a way i can *completely* remove PulseAudio from my system and continue to use ALSA as i did for these past couple of years on Arch when everything worked perfectly?

ngoonee · 2011-05-02 12:12:20

goll wrote:

Is there a way i can *completely* remove PulseAudio from my system and continue to use ALSA as i did for these past couple of years on Arch when everything worked perfectly?

Sure, just uninstall whatever gnome components you use.

goll · 2011-05-02 12:18:23

Well, the only gnome components i use are the ones that were installed as various dependencies as i'm using awesome, so i wouldn't actually know where to start...

whoops · 2011-05-02 12:24:46

sudo pacman -Rsnc pulseaudio
(be careful )

Last edited by whoops (2011-05-02 12:25:07)

ngoonee · 2011-05-02 14:54:14

Better you check out what pulseaudio depends on. Do NOT run the line whoops posted...

KimTjik · 2011-05-02 16:32:21

Do you really need to remove pulseaudio and all its dependencies to get rid of it being loaded? I don't think so.

I think it's enough that you remove the asound.conf pulseaudio creates (this is in my view not KISS to let pulseaudio by simply being installed override or put in place a previously not existing file), if not rebooting kill all pulseaudio processes and then restart alsa daemon.

I've done this and it solves these issues. Only downside is that while pulseaudio is loaded (even if not correctly so it controls channels) audio output gets a decibel boast. Nevertheless if you decide to use pulseaudio, there's no problem configure mpd to use it, and get it to nicely work with other audio applications (at least in my experience, but I still don't like pulseaudio that much).

kmiernik · 2011-05-10 01:12:46

I have suffered in a similar way after upgrade to gnome3 with pulseaudio. On the one side it is pretty nice tool, on the other it won't work with a build-in microphone on either of my two laptops. With pulseaudio there's no application that is able to catch anything with microphone. As soon as I kill pulseaudio everything is working back again. What is more interesting pulseaudio seems to work brilliantly with an external usb sound card. A microphone attached to this one works out of the box.

If anyone knows what might be the reason of such a behavior I would be very glad to fix it and live with pulseaudio.

If it fails I could stick to alsa however I don't know how to connect it with a sound applet (or whatever they call the thing on the top bar in gnome shell) nor I don't know how to define function keys for volume up or down. They seem to be dead one the pulseaudio is off. I was able to configure keys via files in fluxbox or xfce but this gnome-shell keyboard shortcuts click-able configurator is just too clever for me and whatever I do he won't store pressed keys.

ngoonee · 2011-05-10 05:31:33

kmiernik wrote:

I have suffered in a similar way after upgrade to gnome3 with pulseaudio. On the one side it is pretty nice tool, on the other it won't work with a build-in microphone on either of my two laptops. With pulseaudio there's no application that is able to catch anything with microphone. As soon as I kill pulseaudio everything is working back again. What is more interesting pulseaudio seems to work brilliantly with an external usb sound card. A microphone attached to this one works out of the box.
If anyone knows what might be the reason of such a behavior I would be very glad to fix it and live with pulseaudio.
If it fails I could stick to alsa however I don't know how to connect it with a sound applet (or whatever they call the thing on the top bar in gnome shell) nor I don't know how to define function keys for volume up or down. They seem to be dead one the pulseaudio is off. I was able to configure keys via files in fluxbox or xfce but this gnome-shell keyboard shortcuts click-able configurator is just too clever for me and whatever I do he won't store pressed keys.

The microphones should work out of the box, if your sound is working. Check the tabs in pavucontrol.

kmiernik · 2011-05-10 13:29:35

I wish it was as simple as moving a slider in pavucontrol. To my opinion is a some mono/stereo issue. I found a way to record sound in audacity. It is when I select stereo input for microphone. When I record with a mono mic setting only the very loud sound is recorded but is still very dim. The sound level detector in pulseaudio control seems to be connected to a mono device and reacts the same way as audacity with mono mic setting. The external usb card I have is mono by itself so that's the reason that it works out of the box.

So the sound with pulseaudio is working but only with applications where I can select stereo input option. For example nor skype nor empathy has such an option and they behavior is analogue to what I observe on pulseaudio peak detector. I haven't seen that problem while running alsa and when I kill pulseaudio everything works fine.

pizzach · 2011-05-10 13:39:10

Pulseaudio just doesn't seem to work well with most mics out of the box. I just wish it was more obvious what it needed. I canceled my Skype subscription over this as I just don't see any fixes in sight. Though it looks like Microsoft is purchasing Skype so it was probably a matter of time for me to drop it anyway.

kmiernik · 2011-05-10 23:37:59

I have found another thing. What pulseaudio sees is an external microphone input. With external microphone connected it works fine. But I still don't have a clue how to change microphone to the build-in one.

05/16 edit:
There's a solution proposed in topic
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=934982
(see post #360) it worked fine in my case.

Last edited by kmiernik (2011-05-16 12:41:41)

Misfit138 · 2011-05-20 02:44:11

Pulseaudio is evil. Pulseaudio is wicked. Pulseaudio must go.
It found its way onto my system recently, (as a dependency for another package) and messed up my ability to use my webcam mic on Skype. Out it went.
I really dislike pulseaudio; I view it as an unnecessary complication which has never been useful to me and has ever only caused trouble.

lio · 2011-05-26 22:04:43

Mk so pulseaudio installed itself on my absolutely perfectly working system which is connected to two different amps using two output of my soundcard.

Now volume levels vary by themself when I start some music or movie applications who have volume control in them.
This used to not happen when I was relying on Alsa only. I was able to have a different control for the volume of each of the outputs and consequently only use the physical controller on the amps to ajust volume levels.

Long story short I want to go back to using only Alsa. Totally get rid of pulseaudio.

I tried

sudo pacman -R pulseaudio

but then I get

error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: gnome-settings-daemon: requires pulseaudio
:: pulseaudio-alsa: requires pulseaudio

if I also remove gnome-settings-daemon, I get a chain of dependancies that lead me to remove gnome-settings-daemon and gnome-shell

Is there a better way to do it than removing all this ?

I don't care if I lose volume control in gnome (the little applet thingy). I just set volume once in alsamixer and uses the control in each application to get satisfying relative level and from there only use the knobs on the amps to control final volume.

*edit*: I went ahead and removed the gnome-settings-daemon and gnome-control-center to be able to remove pulseaudio. Unfortunately this prevent gnome 3 to boot. even in fallback mode.

Is it possible at all to use gnome 3 without having pulseaudio installed ?

*edit 2*: oh well apparently you cant...so annoying.
thank you all.

Last edited by lio (2011-05-27 00:08:59)

kazuldur · 2011-05-28 15:28:48

You can try:

pacman -Rdd pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa

hadrons123 · 2011-11-06 17:16:37

i wanted to remove pulseaudio which i thought is the root cause for crackling sound in my speakers and i did this 'pacman -Rdd pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa'and was left with no audio on speakers but still i hear crackling.

is there something else i am missing?

i removed both pulseaudio and pulseaudio-alsa.
now no sound on speakers but hissing and crackling still in speakers,am i left with no option other than installing the 2 packages?

since i am hearing hissing after removing pulse,maybe something else is creating the hissing.any suggestions guys?

Last edited by hadrons123 (2011-11-06 17:19:05)

ngoonee · 2011-11-07 04:37:29

hadrons123 wrote:

i wanted to remove pulseaudio which i thought is the root cause for crackling sound in my speakers and i did this 'pacman -Rdd pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa'and was left with no audio on speakers but still i hear crackling.
is there something else i am missing?
i removed both pulseaudio and pulseaudio-alsa.
now no sound on speakers but hissing and crackling still in speakers,am i left with no option other than installing the 2 packages?
since i am hearing hissing after removing pulse,maybe something else is creating the hissing.any suggestions guys?

I doubt pulseaudio causes crackling sounds, most likely your alsa driver has a bug. Did it work properly before?

hadrons123 · 2011-11-07 04:43:44

the thing is...
i was using fedora 14 which didnt have this crackling issue.but since i started using fedora 15 with gnome 3 and arch with gnome3 i have this issue.
but while using fedora 14 or windows xp , i dont have this crackling.

i assumed it was pulse audio. how to find out what is causing crackling and hissing?

ngoonee · 2011-11-07 04:52:13

hadrons123 wrote:

the thing is...
i was using fedora 14 which didnt have this crackling issue.but since i started using fedora 15 with gnome 3 and arch with gnome3 i have this issue.
but while using fedora 14 or windows xp , i dont have this crackling.
i assumed it was pulse audio. how to find out what is causing crackling and hissing?

The kernel probably changed as well, for one, which means your ALSA drivers may have changed as well. If I'm not mistaken fedora 14 used pulseaudio by default as well.

hadrons123 · 2011-11-07 04:54:32

is there a way to fix this crackling in arch now?

ngoonee · 2011-11-07 05:37:22

hadrons123 wrote:

is there a way to fix this crackling in arch now?

This is Arch, please do your homework instead of just asking for solutions to be handed to you. You may want to check whether older kernels solve the problem. If your first reaction to reading that is to ask 'how do I do that' you may want to consider simply installing some other distro (or asking at the fedora forums).

hadrons123 · 2011-11-07 05:47:41

wow....a lot of condescension from a moderator.
i didnt ask for a simple solution.i was asking for a direction to look for in the current kernel.
i did my research (considering i am new to arch ) and found this thread https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=120162
and it wasnt helpful.
just simply dismissing is it as a kernel issue and to search for it in some other distro isnt the way to get things done.

Last edited by hadrons123 (2011-11-07 05:51:10)

ngoonee · 2011-11-07 06:09:52

hadrons123 wrote:

wow....a lot of condension from a moderator.
i didnt ask for a simple solution.i was asking for a direction to look for in the current kernel.
i did my research (considering i am new to arch ) and found this thread https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=120162
and it wasnt helpful.
just simply dismissing is it as a kernel issue and to search for it in some other distro isnt the way to get things done.

It is most likely a kernel issue, and if you had even tried to downgrade your kernel it may even have been solved by now. You already know that the problem occurs in more than one distro, if you were running Fedora 14 you also should know that pulseaudio already works fine on your machine.

Arch users know what is installed and running on their machines. There's nothing wrong with using any other distro, and if Arch does not suit you (or you do not suit Arch) then its easier for you and for others if you find something that suits you better.

hadrons123 · 2011-11-07 06:32:51

all the kernels i have in arch is >= 3.0.i had this crackling issue in 2.6.38 of fedora 15 but surprising i didnt have it in ubuntu 11.04 which has the same kernel.so i am not sure if it is an kernel issue.i dont want to downgrade becoz you think ''It is most likely a kernel issue''.

i am here to use arch and its my choice, and i am not blaming arch that it didnt suit me.i have issues and i try to solve it. please read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_and_You
if you know how to locate or guide then its fine.if you dont know,you can choose not to answer but dont patronize forum members to use some other distro or not use arch.

just becoz i mentioned that i am new to arch doesnt mean i dont know what is installed and what is running on my system.

GSF1200S · 2011-11-07 07:41:42

hadrons123 wrote:

all the kernels i have in arch is >= 3.0.i had this crackling issue in 2.6.38 of fedora 15 but surprising i didnt have it in ubuntu 11.04 which has the same kernel.so i am not sure if it is an kernel issue.i dont want to downgrade becoz you think ''It is most likely a kernel issue''.
i am here to use arch and its my choice, and i am not blaming arch that it didnt suit me.i have issues and i try to solve it. please read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_and_You
if you know how to locate or guide then its fine.if you dont know,you can choose not to answer but dont patronize forum members to use some other distro or not use arch.
just becoz i mentioned that i am new to arch doesnt mean i dont know what is installed and what is running on my system.

I would heavily suggest you do whatever you must to get rid of pulseaudio; it is the first thing I remove if installing a distro which has it by default, and I will not use anything that requires it.

That said, Ubuntu patches pretty heavily. I would suggest running lspci, copying the sound card line, pasting it in a google search and add "ubuntu crackling sound" after it. Search for a bug report or link to a kernel thread concerning the same issue, and scour every link within that bug report looking for the diff patch ubuntu devs used to fix the problem. You can use ABS to build a patched kernel with that diff patch pretty easily...

**EDIT** One thing you will learn about this community is that they dont care about your feelings, they dont care if you get the problem fixed (though they will try to help you do so), and they respond VERY negatively unless you demonstrate you have exhausted all other research options before making the post. The Arch community is usually pretty brutal, but extremely knowledgeable. Im not giving you a hard time- just noted your defensive statements while thinking to myself "they wont do you any good."

Last edited by GSF1200S (2011-11-07 07:46:42)

hadrons123 · 2011-11-07 10:03:03

thanks for the tip and guidance , GSF1200S!

i really appreciate it.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-02 11:52:11

PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#2 2011-05-02 12:12:20

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#3 2011-05-02 12:18:23

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#4 2011-05-02 12:24:46

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#5 2011-05-02 14:54:14

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#6 2011-05-02 16:32:21

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#7 2011-05-10 01:12:46

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#8 2011-05-10 05:31:33

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#9 2011-05-10 13:29:35

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#10 2011-05-10 13:39:10

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#11 2011-05-10 23:37:59

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#12 2011-05-20 02:44:11

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#13 2011-05-26 22:04:43

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#14 2011-05-28 15:28:48

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#15 2011-11-06 17:16:37

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#16 2011-11-07 04:37:29

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#17 2011-11-07 04:43:44

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#18 2011-11-07 04:52:13

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#19 2011-11-07 04:54:32

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#20 2011-11-07 05:37:22

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#21 2011-11-07 05:47:41

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#22 2011-11-07 06:09:52

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#23 2011-11-07 06:32:51

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#24 2011-11-07 07:41:42

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

#25 2011-11-07 10:03:03

Re: PulseAudio is wreaking havoc on my system

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