ALSA 1.0.24 Has Arrived, Bringing Better Linux Audio

[djdoo]

Well the discussion went a bit of topic but I have to admit that I didn't have a full image about pulse audio and I want to thank all the fellows here for their valuable info!

Sorry for sounded absolut in my position but now with the new info I learned about pulse audio I still have my dislikasion let's say about pulse mainly because of the very little progress it has done over the years mainly in improving the latency problems and furthermore in adopting multichannel sound which is a critical point for modern times of digital entertainment.
So I end up with a question:
Is there a precompiled Kernel with real time synchronization for Ubuntu like there is the ''trace'' kernel package for openSUSE??

[Thatguy]

Agree to disagree? I like being able to arbitrarily string things together in a standardised way. It's like the next logical step after MIDI from my perspective. And the real-time kernel patches seal the deal.

If nothing else, maybe we can agree that Pulseaudio is mostly a source of pain. :/

There are actually better standards for mac/windows then linux and the same functionality. It is however typically located in the DAW.

[benmoran]

I use a usb webcam with built in mic, A 5.1 surround gaming headset, and a bluetooth headset. Before Pulseaudio, it was an absolute configuration nightmare. I spent more time configuring settings than I did listening to stuff. It's 2011, and a lot of users have this kind of equipment these days.

Before Pulseaudio:
Want to plug in a usb headset in the middle of a movie? Too bad.
Want to reroute audio from your computer speakers to a bluetooth headset during a call? Too bad.

Pulseaudio makes all these things possible. For that, it kicks ass and I love it.

[Wyatt]

There are substantially better Os architectures for these types of useage cases and the work isn't worth the reward.

Agree to disagree? I like being able to arbitrarily string things together in a standardised way. It's like the next logical step after MIDI from my perspective. And the real-time kernel patches seal the deal.

If nothing else, maybe we can agree that Pulseaudio is mostly a source of pain. :/

[DanL]

The less software stays between the sound card and the media stream the faster the sound will be.

Raging against pulseaudio is okay if you have hardware mixing, but otherwise, pulseaudio is superior to ALSA's dmix software mixer and replaces it. Do a little more reading before concluding that "pulse sucks" and is just an ALSA add-on.

[Thatguy]

yes.. its small private studio, mostly for local musicians, in my town musicians never will be on world stage...

I have a small private studio with analog outboard gear in my basement stocked with microphones and guitars etc.

I still won't use jack or linux for audio. I have tried and failed. It simply isn't up to par. Honestly I really don't that the linux community should target this area. It is very specialized has very deeply entrenched players and would require some substantial resources to make it functional.

they should stick with servers or general purpose desktop client cloud systems. Linux is great at that.

There are substantially better Os architectures for these types of useage cases and the work isn't worth the reward.

[siban]

I never understood the real usage of pulseaudio, I mean they made a piece of software to stay between alsa and the applications in order to do what??

You can read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio

The main PulseAudio features include:

• Per-application volume controls
• An extensible plugin architecture with support for loadable modules
• Compatibility with many popular audio applications
• Support for multiple audio sources and sinks
• Low-latency operation and support for latency measurement
• A zero-copy memory architecture for processor resource efficiency
• Ability to discover other computers using PulseAudio on the local network and play sound through their speakers directly
• Ability to change which output device an application plays sound through while the application is playing sound (without the application needing to support this, and indeed without even being aware that this happened)
• A command-line interface with scripting capabilities
• A sound daemon with command line reconfiguration capabilities
• Built-in sample conversion and resampling capabilities
• The ability to combine multiple sound cards into one
• The ability to synchronize multiple playback streams
• Bluetooth audio devices with dynamic detection
• The ability to enable system wide equalization

[NomadDemon]

its usefull if you have instant messager sounds on, and watch movie, its ugly to have full volume.. and hear some background sounds...

[djdoo]

From what i can tell, it was a reaction to Windows 7 to allow different apps to have separate volume levels. It sure seems to have caused a lot of issues for such a minor use-case, though.

I also use Win 7 and I never found myself want to adjust volume separately for a program because it is too damn difficult to hear 2 or 3 sounds at the same time so for me this is a completely useless feature let alone that most of the media applications have software volume controls so no need for such crappy stuff.
The less software stays between the sound card and the media stream the faster the sound will be.

[smitty3268]

I never understood the real usage of pulseaudio, I mean they made a piece of software to stay between alsa and the applications in order to do what?? Increase latency? Furthermore it is usable only for stereo streams and actually most of the applications don't need it except for Gnome ones which is the main reason why I don't like Gnome.

Remove pulseaudio from Gnome and then we talk again.

From what i can tell, it was a reaction to Windows 7 to allow different apps to have separate volume levels. It sure seems to have caused a lot of issues for such a minor use-case, though.