How to use GNOME sound without PA
You can in fact use sound in GNOME without PA, I've done it for years. First you need to purge
Pulseaudio and all the *-pulseaudio packages so as to remove configuration files that can cause
some applications to default to looking for PA as their sound sink. Pulseaudio libraries can
remain, some packages are compiled to report them as dependancies. This will set up ALSA
as the sound default, but also remove GNOME's volume control and disable the PA mixer.
You will need a new volume control, and a mixer, Volti works very well and provides both. You need
to add a .desktop file in /usr/share/gnome/autostart or some other autostart directory to start
Volti at boot. One issue: in gnome-shell, the Volti applet ends up in the system tray, so you need an
"icons on top" or similar extension to bring back the traditioal tray if you want quick access to it. In
Cinnamon, IceWM, and other traditional desktops it displays in the tray, you'd never notice anything
was different about the volume control, even the volume keys work if you press and hold them.
You used to be able to whitelist Volti for Unity's tray, I don't know if you still can because I stopped
playing with Unity when the remote search mess started up.
Needless to day, only hardware mixing works when PA is gone unless you install and use JACK.
Hardware mixing outperforms software mixing, as usual. On the other hand, if you don't have it
and can spare the CPU usage, you might be better off keeping PA installed to avoid messes like one
appication at a time using sound. Some netbooks can't even play a mono soundtrack without
software mixing-and they are the machines that can most benefit from saving CPU cycles! I
use JACK in mine, if you don't want to deal with that use PA.
Originally posted by Awesomeness
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Pulseaudio and all the *-pulseaudio packages so as to remove configuration files that can cause
some applications to default to looking for PA as their sound sink. Pulseaudio libraries can
remain, some packages are compiled to report them as dependancies. This will set up ALSA
as the sound default, but also remove GNOME's volume control and disable the PA mixer.
You will need a new volume control, and a mixer, Volti works very well and provides both. You need
to add a .desktop file in /usr/share/gnome/autostart or some other autostart directory to start
Volti at boot. One issue: in gnome-shell, the Volti applet ends up in the system tray, so you need an
"icons on top" or similar extension to bring back the traditioal tray if you want quick access to it. In
Cinnamon, IceWM, and other traditional desktops it displays in the tray, you'd never notice anything
was different about the volume control, even the volume keys work if you press and hold them.
You used to be able to whitelist Volti for Unity's tray, I don't know if you still can because I stopped
playing with Unity when the remote search mess started up.
Needless to day, only hardware mixing works when PA is gone unless you install and use JACK.
Hardware mixing outperforms software mixing, as usual. On the other hand, if you don't have it
and can spare the CPU usage, you might be better off keeping PA installed to avoid messes like one
appication at a time using sound. Some netbooks can't even play a mono soundtrack without
software mixing-and they are the machines that can most benefit from saving CPU cycles! I
use JACK in mine, if you don't want to deal with that use PA.
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