Google Chrome/Chromium Now Supports PulseAudio

[energyman]

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.)

you can have that with well designed apps. vlc, xine, amarok.. are just examples.

[curaga]

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).

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.

Your argument is $WORKING_APP doesn't do sound properly on $NEW_SOUND_SYSTEM, so it's the problem of the $WORKING_APP and they all should convert to the $NEW_SOUND_SYSTEM. Yeah gotcha. How about the $NEW_SOUND_SYSTEM work with existing apps instead of forcing everyone to accomodate it.

[blackshard]

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.

Well if jack/pulseaudio bypass some faulty alsa implementation, I may agree they "improve performance" like drag was saying to me. But then I have to say that's not PA or jack that improve performance, but it is ALSA that has some bugs or misconfigurations.

ALSA, from my point of view, had to be as like as WaveOut is for Windows: an interface layer between the audio driver and the applications. It has to reject unsupported streams on limited hardware and not trying to resample IMHO, and maybe offer some generalized support for soundcards with hardware mixing and MIDI capabilities. Then there should be another layer like PA to do software mixing and application volume control.

[RealNC]

you can have that with well designed apps. vlc, xine, amarok.. are just examples.

I don't see how. I use all those apps and don't see them in the mixer with ALSA. alsamixer and kmix (also took a look at the Gnome mixer) doesn't list applications without PA. Only a general "master" volume. The only systems that list the running apps and allow me to modify their volumes are those running either PA or OSS4.

[liam]

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

You can make it RT if you want (using RT kit, not the real time out-of-main realtime kernel -- using that, however, I would expect you would be able to get, on an average desktop, sub 1ms latencies, judging from what I can get with a standard kernel).
I can easily get 8-10ms latency consistency, even under pretty heavy load.
You do have to do a little configuring, however, and determine what mixing solution provides the best sound quality to cpu usage.

[yogi_berra]

Have fun toying with your Win95-level audio stack.

Working 5.1 hardware mixed audio without PA.
2 channel stereo with PA.

Win95 indeed.

[NomadDemon]

Working 5.1 hardware mixed audio without PA.
2 channel stereo with PA.

Win95 indeed.

set PA to 5.1 and stfu troll

[danwood76]

This fanboy war is a joke!

OSS is far behind Alsa in implementation because of its previous licensing. This is why such a project should be dropped, the reason why some cards that don't work on Alsa work on OSS is due to the hardware manufacturers preferring the closed licence.

We only need one hardware interface to the audio and it should be Alsa.

Pulse audio has been very stable for a couple of years, there were lots of teething troubles as more people started to use it but it has settled down and works very well. By the way software mixing was carried out by dmix before pulse was used.

Oh and yogi_berra your silly response, "I dont know how to use it so its crap" is a great argument!
You set 5.1 in a simple drop down in the pulse control panel, so hard.

[mirv]

This fanboy war is a joke!

OSS is far behind Alsa in implementation because of its previous licensing. This is why such a project should be dropped, the reason why some cards that don't work on Alsa work on OSS is due to the hardware manufacturers preferring the closed licence.

We only need one hardware interface to the audio and it should be Alsa.

Pulse audio has been very stable for a couple of years, there were lots of teething troubles as more people started to use it but it has settled down and works very well. By the way software mixing was carried out by dmix before pulse was used.

Oh and yogi_berra your silly response, "I dont know how to use it so its crap" is a great argument!
You set 5.1 in a simple drop down in the pulse control panel, so hard.

I would just point out that not everybody uses a gui for everything, and yogi_berra may be having issues where setting that doesn't work for him. Or not. Don't jump the gun though.

[danwood76]

Ok pactl for the command line.
Either way the setup is simple and is no excuse for not being able to use it!