If you are getting laggy sound with PA it is probably related to the resample method that is selected in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf. For most processors the default is a good choice, but a faster (and lower quality) method is needed for low end systems.
For those who claim we should all go back to using dmix on top of alsa I would like to point out a few of its failings that PA fixes:
Multiple sound devices. Things like USB headphones, secondary soundcards, etc aren't that uncommon. dmix doesn't provide a way to move streams to different devices.
Sound quality. Pulse actually uses higher quality resample methods, (at least by default) meaning higher audio quality.
Per-application volume control. Really, having to find the application that is making noise and hope that it has a volume control (hint, not all do) is not productive when compared to just bringing up veromix and changing its volume.
For those who claim we should all go back to using dmix on top of alsa I would like to point out a few of its failings that PA fixes:
Multiple sound devices. Things like USB headphones, secondary soundcards, etc aren't that uncommon. dmix doesn't provide a way to move streams to different devices.
Sound quality. Pulse actually uses higher quality resample methods, (at least by default) meaning higher audio quality.
Per-application volume control. Really, having to find the application that is making noise and hope that it has a volume control (hint, not all do) is not productive when compared to just bringing up veromix and changing its volume.
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