Google Chrome/Chromium Now Supports PulseAudio

[MNKyDeth]

From my perspective I feel Pulseaudio is good for those that do not have hardware mixing audio cards. Software mixing is the only thing PA brings to the table from my perspective.

I might be one of those creative junkies but there are other cards out there that use hardware mixing. I would also like to point out that comparing audio quality from my X-fi to the onboard Intel or c-media or whatever it is, to me sounds the same.

Without PA I am able to play all my games and listen to the in game music. I usually turn of in game music though. I have just the sound effects turned on as music usually hinders those audio que's that you are listening for when someone is just around the corner.
At the same time though, I can use mumble or Teamspeak at the same time while playing my music from Amarok or some other audio player.

The one main advantage I see to not having PA. Especially on a gaming rig, is that I can play all Linux games without issues. If I am to use PA and play a game like UT or Rune for example I either get no audio or I get a delay of 1-5 seconds from the audio. That in a gaming environment is completely unacceptable. Audio que's are very important in gaming so the faster I hear something the faster I can react or plan to react to a situation.

In the end, great that Chrome is supporting PA now for those that don't have the 30-60 bucks to put into a hardware mixing card. Or those that don't run a gaming Linux PC. But I do hope that developers never go so far as to put PA only in their programs with no oss or alsa interface. When this starts to happen I will be forced back to the windows realm. Where as I am already forced to use Gentoo or Arch so I m not forced to use PA. It's not a bad thing I just prefer Fedora but have not been able to use it with games since fedora 12 for audio reasons.

[F.Ultra]

The one main advantage I see to not having PA. Especially on a gaming rig, is that I can play all Linux games without issues. If I am to use PA and play a game like UT or Rune for example I either get no audio or I get a delay of 1-5 seconds from the audio. That in a gaming environment is completely unacceptable. Audio que's are very important in gaming so the faster I hear something the faster I can react or plan to react to a situation.

That is because these games are not compiled with PA support (they seam to be OSS games). Whenever there is a modern game released that don't work with PA it usually is because the bundled sdl libraries are compiled without PA support and simply removing them so the system versions are used instead solves the problem (i.e thats been exactly this for all the Humble Bundle games with audio issues).

But I do hope that developers never go so far as to put PA only in their programs with no oss or alsa interface. When this starts to happen I will be forced back to the windows realm.

No you don't, the problems that you see is because you have a mixed set (Alsa, OSS, PA) of applcations/games. If all the applications where to be PA only then you would have no problem. However most applications or games should use SDL instead since it's the portable way and it supports all the different audio systems.

[AnonymousCoward]

PulseAudio is awesome, especially if you have more than one output device.

Pulsaudio makes it very easy to control volume on a per app basis, move the sound between different output devices or clone it to all devices, again possible on a per app basis and without even interrupting playback.

My main PC doubles as HTPC, with on one end a monitor and headphone connected to the internal soundcard and on the other end a larger TV screen connected through HDMI, so I really appreciate the flexibility I get from PulseAudio.

What does alsa provide? Complex configuration files with probably the most cryptic syntax invented ever and some user unfriendly command line apps, yuck!

[BlackStar]

PulseAudio is awesome, especially if you have more than one output device.

Pulsaudio makes it very easy to control volume on a per app basis, move the sound between different output devices or clone it to all devices, again possible on a per app basis and without even interrupting playback.

My main PC doubles as HTPC, with on one end a monitor and headphone connected to the internal soundcard and on the other end a larger TV screen connected through HDMI, so I really appreciate the flexibility I get from PulseAudio.

What does alsa provide? Complex configuration files with probably the most cryptic syntax invented ever and some user unfriendly command line apps, yuck!

Not to mention that the alsa mixer is very bad in sound quality, CPU usage *and* latency.. My little Zacate was crying until I installed PulseAudio. Audio quality was instantly better, CPU usage dropped from 10% to 3% and latency improved to the point I could use my MIDI keyboard without jumping through hoops (non-professionally, obviously - I'm a drummer not a keyboardist! ) Plus, I could finally configure headphones and HDMI output without using the console or reroute audio to my HTPC through the network. Win-win. This was on KDE/Arch, by the way.

PulseAudio used to be a bitch back in Ubuntu 8.04 but there is little reason to avoid it nowadays. Yes, some drivers may still be bad but the solution is to improve the drivers not ditch PulseAudio.

[NomadDemon]

I also like PA, always works as it should, only sometimes theres a little latency. so i switch back to pure alsa [xonar dx]
iam drummer also ; p
cant get zynaddsubfx without alsa-OSS or JACK to work good

[kayosiii]

It IS an abstraction layer since offers high level functions (software mixing, realtime resampling, filtering, etc...) using lower level functions (offered by ALSA).

Another by definition adds complexity to the system, it can't simply "improve performance". There were (and still there are) many laments from people about cpu power usage from pulseaudio, mostly coming from the resampler in a standard and plain out-of-the-box configuration.

It can't improve performance, instead it can offer added services but can't do that without using more power.

Your assuming of course that alsa is running with absolutley the most optimal settings which of course is almost never going to be the case. Jack is another api that sits on top of alsa an privides better performance (in this case Latency) than alsa based apps tend to provide. Pulse audio can be smart about how it uses Alsa and be an improvement on how typical alsa apps work. There is no reason why re-sampling and mixing interfaces cant be just as efficient as the Alsa native ones. Alsa is modular enough that this can be an or rather than an and.

[energyman]

NOT SUPPORTING!

For a couple of days it DEPENDS on pulseaudio.

A piece of shit that a lot of people don't want on their system.

Thankfully, after emerging that crapfast, an emerge -C remoced this clusterfuck. But in the meantime the usual shit happened - why oh why is there a sound problem - oh, pulseaudio is running!

fuck!

There is no need for this crap for 95%. Why are distributions hellbend on supporting those 5% while the rest has to suffer? There is nothing good about this. Nothing.

[BlackStar]

A piece of shit that a lot of people don't want on their system.

There is no need for this crap for 95%. Why are distributions hellbend on supporting those 5% while the rest has to suffer? There is nothing good about this. Nothing.

Yeah, obviously distros are "hellbend" on supporting "good for nothing" PulseAudio just to make people suffer. Got ya.

Have fun toying with your Win95-level audio stack.

[RealNC]

The only thing I want from PA is a per-application volume mixer. Why the heck don't they provide that in ALSA? OK, I got it with OSS4 on systems that have supported sound cards, but it's such a vital thing today, you have to wonder why ALSA doesn't provide it. And it's not like the ALSA guys tell you "we don't because you should use PA for that." Many ALSA devs shake their heads when they hear of PA (with it being a sound server and all.)

[energyman]

Yeah, obviously distros are "hellbend" on supporting "good for nothing" PulseAudio just to make people suffer. Got ya.

Have fun toying with your Win95-level audio stack.

so please, tell me what you need pulseaudio for on a standard desktop computer - and networked audio isn't among them.