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  • #11
    @darkphoenix22

    did you try a .34 ck patched kernel with 1000 hz? one gamer really likes it... no pulseaudio, just pure alsa however on kanotix.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by crazycheese View Post
      What? Sorry, but low-latency server is JACK. Pulse is much more latent and high-latency & high perfomance vs low-latency vs low-perfomance are not related to Pulse. Its either faster reacting(but doing less work) and consuming more or slower reacting(and doing more work) and consuming less. Same reason why RT linux kernel is slower in server(ie constant load) environiment.

      Pulse clicking is ubuntu issue.
      If application uses a library to output the sound, gstreamer, sdl, openal, doesntmatter what. And this library is wrongly configured to output sound to ALSA. But Pulse is installed and alsa.conf points to pulse. This thing happens:
      Some game>>libsdl>>alsa(reroutes to pulse)>>pulse>>alsa you hear clicky-noise

      Where if that lib attaches itself to pulse correctly:
      Some game>>libsdl>>pulse>>alsa

      I have no clicks or anything with pulse. I also do not really care for ubuntu not doing their homework. Gentoo and PA perfect setup describes pretty much clearly how to link PA with libs, apps and soundsystems.

      Didnt check on 70% issue, so I believe you. But again, not single desktop app working wrong with PA+Alsa up to date.



      Athlon 3200 on NF-7S v2.0, VIA AC97 chip.
      Intel E5300 on P43ME, VIA VT1708S
      Athlon II x2 240 on ASUS M3N78-EM, Realtek ALC1200
      Asus A6Rp notebook with some ATI chipset
      Athlon II x4 630 on Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H 1.1, Realtek ALC889A

      Not a single problem.
      Of course this isnt major industrial-level testing and I cannot speak for PA as whole. However applications SHOULD use either libSDL or libopenAL or if they require more features gstreamer, xine or even managin whole sound pipeline themself by using alsa/oss and codecs/libs directly. This is however has issues. Because you required close-to-system calls, you should support it. Higher level libs do not offer the features which arent generic or cannot be emulated. But if you program this way, your app has pretty much in similar with DOS era. Writing your own drivers, mixer etc. You asked for it.

      Of course there may be driver problems within ALSA. There may be problems within SDL and Pulse(especially in case I described above; just install SDL-pulse version only, not of all-in-one). But system is there, frameworks are there and they work!

      Now dont tell me DirectX(Directsound, -music or however it is called now) is consequent and API and sound model was never changed
      It did, devs pushed new versions, everything worked to some degree, then got broken again and again etc. I dont see how linux is "not ready" here. In fact linux is more ready than windows; you just put sound chip manufacturer publishing specs for new chips and game publishers updating their software(regardless foss or proprietary) and it works.
      You expect game developers new to Linux to make sense of all of this?

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      • #13
        Sound on Linux needs to be stupid simple going forward. Right now it's the furthest thing from simple.

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        • #14
          You use the wrong distro, that's clear

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          • #15
            I use infinityOS which doesn't use Pulse. It uses bare ALSA and we're looking at switching to OSSv4 for the per-app volume controls.

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            • #16
              How about a performance tuned kernel?

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              • #17
                I'll look into it but sound works fine in infinityOS.

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                • #18
                  Kanotix is pure speed for games.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by darkphoenix22 View Post
                    Much of the problems stem from how PulseAudio works.



                    PulseAudio sacrifices latency for power consumption. High latency, low power consumption.
                    Uhm, PulseAudio has *lower* latency than ALSA's dmix. Of course not as low as no mixer at all, but lower than ALSA's mixer.

                    So from a latency point of view, PulseAudio is better for games than ALSA.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by RealNC View Post
                      Uhm, PulseAudio has *lower* latency than ALSA's dmix. Of course not as low as no mixer at all, but lower than ALSA's mixer.

                      So from a latency point of view, PulseAudio is better for games than ALSA.
                      Half the games I tested did not work with PulseAudio due to latency reasons. Games, for better or for worse, depend on sound for timing. A high latency framework WILL break games.

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