Linux Audio Driver Improvements On The Horizon

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Audio Driver Improvements On The Horizon

The audio/sound pull for the Linux 3.8 kernel has been sent in and it features audio driver improvements, new capabilities, clean-ups, and more...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI1MTY

[timofonic]

But we still require to use a beast like JACK to do "professional" audio under Linux...

And well, hardware mixer support is limited to a few cards (most of them Creative ones). And let's forget about advanced features of DSPs, like the E-MU ones or others.

MacOS X and even Windows still has an extremely high amount of advantages in the audio stuff.

I really hope the KLANG concept gets matured soon, this is one of the lots of lacks for making Linux a proper desktop system.

And Pulseaudio SUCKS.

[rudolph_steinberg]

But we still require to use a beast like JACK to do "professional" audio under Linux...

And well, hardware mixer support is limited to a few cards (most of them Creative ones). And let's forget about advanced features of DSPs, like the E-MU ones or others.

MacOS X and even Windows still has an extremely high amount of advantages in the audio stuff.

I really hope the KLANG concept gets matured soon, this is one of the lots of lacks for making Linux a proper desktop system.

And Pulseaudio SUCKS.

Linux doesn't need an even better audio subsystem, it needs professional audio applications that don't suck. The problem is that the flagship DAW is Ardour, whose v3 release has been delayed for about 3 years now. Ardour3 was going to finally bring MIDI support, which most people consider critical, as Cubase and every other Windows and Mac DAW since about 1995 released have had MIDI support. The other problem with Ardour is that it crashes more often than a blind man driving a Ferrari. Paul apparently doesn't know how to fix it, so he announced that he'll be releasing Ardour3 soon regardless of the issues with it so that they can start piling more features on top of their crashy piece of shit DAW, while whining about how $3000 a month in donations just isn't enough.

For that matter, any of the other Linux DAWs with about 10 years of development that still aren't stable and don't have basic features aren't going to be the one to put Linux audio on the map either. There are a number of promising new projects out there, but only time will tell if any of them make it, or become just another abandoned Linux audio project that once had potential.

[Bucic]

But we still require to use a beast like JACK to do "professional" audio under Linux...

And well, hardware mixer support is limited to a few cards (most of them Creative ones). And let's forget about advanced features of DSPs, like the E-MU ones or others.

MacOS X and even Windows still has an extremely high amount of advantages in the audio stuff.

I really hope the KLANG concept gets matured soon, this is one of the lots of lacks for making Linux a proper desktop system.

And Pulseaudio SUCKS.

I'm switching from Ubuntu to Lubuntu. Would you advise a simple user to avoid PulseAudio? Why? Lubuntu comes without it but I need recorder and equalizer and the ones I know require PA...

[ChrisXY]

Internal speakers of clevo p170em doesn't seem to work anymore with this, just external speakers.
Realtek ALC892

Let's see if this needs to be a bugreport...

[GreatEmerald]

I'm switching from Ubuntu to Lubuntu. Would you advise a simple user to avoid PulseAudio? Why? Lubuntu comes without it but I need recorder and equalizer and the ones I know require PA...

The only reasons people say that is due to historical reasons (early PA versions were not very good, but current ones are very good) and the fact that they are too lazy to configure it. And then there are a few oddball configurations whose drivers in ALSA are poor and PulseAudio just tends to hit bugs in them more often.

In short: if it works for you, definitely do not remove it. If it doesn't work, then configure it to make it work.

[schmidtbag]

The only reasons people say that is due to historical reasons (early PA versions were not very good, but current ones are very good) and the fact that they are too lazy to configure it. And then there are a few oddball configurations whose drivers in ALSA are poor and PulseAudio just tends to hit bugs in them more often.

In short: if it works for you, definitely do not remove it. If it doesn't work, then configure it to make it work.

I agree, I used to not be fond of PA. It always worked for me, but it was a little too heavy for my liking. But today, it seems fine. I don't do enough special things with audio to use it over plain ALSA but PA does greatly help when it comes to muxing, because ALSA is a pain in the ass when it comes to that.

All i want is a decent user friendly way of muxing channels in ALSA. The asoundrc files don't work half the time and their documentation is overall poorly written.

[Bucic]

The only reasons people say that is due to historical reasons (early PA versions were not very good, but current ones are very good) and the fact that they are too lazy to configure it. And then there are a few oddball configurations whose drivers in ALSA are poor and PulseAudio just tends to hit bugs in them more often.

In short: if it works for you, definitely do not remove it. If it doesn't work, then configure it to make it work.

I do absolutely no fancy things re sound. Thanks! Very informative.

[gamerk2]

Linux doesn't need an even better audio subsystem, it needs professional audio applications that don't suck. The problem is that the flagship DAW is Ardour, whose v3 release has been delayed for about 3 years now. Ardour3 was going to finally bring MIDI support, which most people consider critical, as Cubase and every other Windows and Mac DAW since about 1995 released have had MIDI support. The other problem with Ardour is that it crashes more often than a blind man driving a Ferrari. Paul apparently doesn't know how to fix it, so he announced that he'll be releasing Ardour3 soon regardless of the issues with it so that they can start piling more features on top of their crashy piece of shit DAW, while whining about how $3000 a month in donations just isn't enough.

For that matter, any of the other Linux DAWs with about 10 years of development that still aren't stable and don't have basic features aren't going to be the one to put Linux audio on the map either. There are a number of promising new projects out there, but only time will tell if any of them make it, or become just another abandoned Linux audio project that once had potential.

The real question then needs to be asked: Why after 10 years can no one seem to get a pro audio application that doesn't suck together? Maybe the app developers aren't the root problem?

[ChrisXY]

Internal speakers of clevo p170em doesn't seem to work anymore with this, just external speakers.
Realtek ALC892

Let's see if this needs to be a bugreport...

Well, one suspend later it works. Seems to be one of these usual bugs with this hardware.

One problem I only have with this notebook is that when I change pulseaudio's "master" volume randomly this happens: http://ompldr.org/vZ296MQ/gibberish.ogg and I have to change the pulseaudio audio profile from 5.1 to 4.1 or similar, then it works just fine again.
Maybe it's a hardware bug, maybe it's in pulseaudio, who knows...