"PulseAudio Is Still Awesome"

[Licaon]

and http://www.lwks.com/index.php?option...temid=81#93822

Anyway, I heard you guys/gals, I'll reinstall PA and try again, with the Arch conf even. I'll report back.

[LightBit]

Please have a look here: http://kodi.wiki/view/PulseAudio - if it still does not work, drop me a message.

Thanks for your concern, but currently pure ALSA works fine for my HTPC.

[Azrael5]

I've noted, using Lubuntu some years ago, that implementing PULSE AUDIO, CPu usage increases considerably. What about KLANG development?

[alaviss]

I've noted, using Lubuntu some years ago, that implementing PULASE AUDIO, CPu usage increases considerably. What about KLANG development?

High CPU usage is normal since PA has to do software mixing. You can choose the most simple mixer to reduce PA CPU usage

[rabcor]

I wonder how something that has not once since it's conception been awesome, can "still be" awesome. I think he means "just as awesome as always" which would be a sarcastic way of saying that pulseaudio still sucks just as much as ever.

It's not people ranting and spreading FUD, it's people ranting and complaining about a product that has done nothing but get in their way and kill their audio quality. Sure, for some users pulse works fine, Paul Frields is clearly one of these people. But everytime I have personally tried to use pulseaudio, it has met me with high latency issues (sound lag) and in some slightly rarer cases, heavily reduced sound quality and/or buzzing sounds where there should be no sounds at all. Not to mention it is a nightmare to configure it, especially since some configuration options don't always work (and I'm talking about configuring it by editing the settings files, not using some GUI).

And it doesn't take a smart person to see that overall, pulseaudio is a terrible sound server design, it's slow, it's fat, it's heavy and it really doesn't do anything in the long run, the only real use case I see for pulseaudio is streaming audio over network, that's it, that's the only thing I see it do that ALSA can't do on it's own, better than how Pulse does it. That's not FUD, that's just my factual experiences with sound on Linux. I'm not a huge fan of ALSA, but I really, really hate pulse.

[Azrael5]

High CPU usage is normal since PA has to do software mixing. You can choose the most simple mixer to reduce PA CPU usage

Couldn't be use hardware mixing? Pulse audio take advntage from HARDWARE ACCELERATION?

[mdias]

Couldn't be use hardware mixing? Pulse audio take advntage from HARDWARE ACCELERATION?

Most people nowadays use hardware that don't support multiple voices; therefore you can't do the mixing in hardware. The most probable cause that in ALSA you have low CPU overhead is because you're probably using dmix, which uses a low-quality-low-overhead resampler.

Try to use the "trivial" resample method in PA and see if it helps. If CPU usage is still too high, file a bug report.

Note that hardware mixing is (almost?) always inferior in quality than software mixing. Depending on your audio needs that might be irrelevant though.

[magika]

Note that hardware mixing is (almost?) always inferior in quality than software mixing.

Citation needed.

[Azrael5]

Most people nowadays use hardware that don't support multiple voices; therefore you can't do the mixing in hardware. The most probable cause that in ALSA you have low CPU overhead is because you're probably using dmix, which uses a low-quality-low-overhead resampler.

Try to use the "trivial" resample method in PA and see if it helps. If CPU usage is still too high, file a bug report.

Note that hardware mixing is (almost?) always inferior in quality than software mixing. Depending on your audio needs that might be irrelevant though.

xonar d2X or x-fi xtreme gamer are not able to manage multiple sound mixing!? cmi8788 ca20k1 audio chips should be let hardware mixing. Or not!?

Hardware inferior compared to software!? depends on audio controller...

EDIT: just removed PULSE, browser is faster, avoiding also randomly lags.... 5.1 audio runs well also if sounds are not spreads separately in each different speaker... much better without pulse in my case. So why ot increase performance and abilities of hardware audio acceleration of audio chipset?

[duby229]

Alsa is not a perfect sound system for a desktop. If alsa's flaws are a papercut, then Pulse Audio is like a 6ft x 9ft (1.8m x 2.7m) bandaid pad.