Linux Audio Is Being Further Modernized With The 4.1 Kernel

[Ardje]

What I'd like to know, as people here tend to call dmix a "dirty hackery":
What is so bad about dmix (compared to pulseaudio)?

Nothing is bad compared to pulseaudio.
The only thing good about pulseaudio is that it takes away some complexity, in return it adds considerable delay and other problems.
I now use jackd in rt mode with qjackctl on an odroid XU3.
It's freaking amazing!
Start your average digital audio workstation software, add some midi controllers, start hydrogen, route output of hydrogen to daw software, including midi bpm and clocks.
If you send the output of hydrogen to your amp out, and to the daw line in, and send the output of the daw out also to amp out you almost hear no phase shifting.
That's very different from 200+ms average pulse audio latency.
I might take a look at dmix too.

[profoundWHALE]

You confused distro and user here. Don't want PA, don't use it. Uninstall PA and make a breath of fresh air

I strongly agree. Removing Pulseaudio is like standing outside on a hot summer day with a nice cool ocean breeze... although when it rains you're stuck out in the cold.

Pulseaudio is like the heating/cooling in a house. It's great when it works, but when it doesn't, it's a huge pain. It would be simpler to just buy an umbrella for the occasion that it rains.

For general use, Pulse should be fine. As soon as you start getting into Jack territory for performance and configuration, it's a huge pain and if you're limited CPU-wise, I would not recommend Pulse.

[magika]

SLACKWARE doesn't use PA and that's one of the reasons i like SLACKWARE.

You confused distro and user here. Don't want PA, don't use it. Uninstall PA and make a breath of fresh air

[AJSB]

Very pleased with continuation of ALSA development.
SLACKWARE doesn't use PA and that's one of the reasons i like SLACKWARE.

PA gives me a lot of serious problems w/o solution with some games like ET:QW (i.e. CTD when pressing any of the 3 VOIP keys) besides lag.

I prefer pure ALSA.

Sure, there are some issues also w/ ALSA but usually easy to solve.

i.e. Running with Rifles (both Demo and full game) when using pure ALSA has no sound but solution is simply create folder...

/etc/openal/alsoft.conf

with following parameter...

drivers=alsa

...and bingo, audio will work and work very well )

Actually, the fault is from game developer and not of ALSA in this case...

[doom_Oo7]

- disable this fucking jack sense thing that cuts audio output to the speakers when headphones are plugged in.

I think that is it possible but only if the sound card driver exposes it.
For instance here if I run alsamixer I have a Auto-mute setting that appears next to the other channels which controls this feature.

[stqn]

I like alsa in terms of quality, but hate it in terms of difficulty to configure and lack of support for some devices, I think it wouldn't be that hard to fix though if it just had a proper GUI front-end, and some automated configuration functions (like they've got for the audio drivers in Windows, you just plug your speakers in and it doesn't matter if it's HDMI, S/PDIF, 2 channel, 5.1, 7.1, or 8.1, as soon as you plug that shit in, it works, and all the channels work, and the most complex thing you may ever have to do manually is setting the default playback device, it's pretty much the same situation for recording (i.e. u plug it in, and it just works)

Alsa has always worked perfectly for basic audio playback for me, but yes I will be happy when it is finally possible to:
- set the default input device (for software that needs audio input but doesn?t let you select the device)
- record sound output (it?s currently impossible to make screencasts with the sound with ALSA)
- disable this fucking jack sense thing that cuts audio output to the speakers when headphones are plugged in.

[berarma]

Pulseaudio works wonderfully for me. Latency is very good unless routing audio through the network. When I need to use pro-grade audio tools I start Jack and it works great together with Pulseaudio.

I don't have problems gaming either. I have an 8-core CPU but haven't had problems with less powerful hw using the standard or fast resampling algorithms.

[duby229]

Linux does do one thing right: Per-application audio control. It's something I've been hoping for on Windows for ages now.

I'm not advocating windows at all, but since windows 7 it does per application volume control too. Actually windows 7 sound system is pretty good.

[gamerk2]

Linux audio is so messy, I hate pulse, everytime I install it it makes my audio go from bad to worse (not to mention fucking latency issues, who the hell thought it was a good idea to play games with pulse audio? Competitive shooters on high latency audio = bad idea)

I like alsa in terms of quality, but hate it in terms of difficulty to configure and lack of support for some devices, I think it wouldn't be that hard to fix though if it just had a proper GUI front-end, and some automated configuration functions (like they've got for the audio drivers in Windows, you just plug your speakers in and it doesn't matter if it's HDMI, S/PDIF, 2 channel, 5.1, 7.1, or 8.1, as soon as you plug that shit in, it works, and all the channels work, and the most complex thing you may ever have to do manually is setting the default playback device, it's pretty much the same situation for recording (i.e. u plug it in, and it just works)

Meanwhile in Linux land we have to scratch our heads for hours to figure out how ot specify the default playback and recording devices if we don't want what is the default, we have to manually set up dmixing for any digital outputs for whatever stupid reason (thank god dmixing is actually enabled by default now on analogue speakers!) pulseaudio tries, and succeeds in bringing linux a little bit closer to the ease of configuration for sound they have over at Windows and OS X, but it's still not really there, and the cost for this is way too high (not to mention I absolutely detest per application mixing, I don't mind having separate volume sliders for every running application, and I think every good mixer should do it, but there should always be a master channel and all other channels should be slave to that master channel, if the master channel (I guess PCM is the right word) volume is lowered, the volume for all other applications should also be lowered. It's nice to be able to mute one application in your system in a mixer, but not if it's done as damn badly as it is in pulseaudio)

What I want, the only thing I want for sound in Linux is a better alsa, an easy alsa, a good alsa, crappy programs like pulseaudio should be there only for people who specifically need them for whichever specific reasons (like pulseaudio's audio sharing over network feature, that is a pretty useful function, but not to everyone) needless to say, I never use pulse myself, since like I said it only makes any audio problems I have with alsa even worse.

But this is definitely one of these issues that underline how Linux is not ready to be a desktop platform, the audio systems are just way too messy.

Linux does do one thing right: Per-application audio control. It's something I've been hoping for on Windows for ages now.

My experience with pulseaudio: Works out of the box. I have an old creative usb 5.1 soundblaster soundcard which does only work with pulseaudio - out of the box. I rarely game and i would not call myself a gamer but i did not recognize any latencies.
Besides that i heavily use the network streaming features. Isn't it great to use your 5.1 sound system over the network with the notebook with only ery littly basic extra configuration?
If there were a fully featured pulseaudio for android i would try replacing my surfing notebook with a tablet but pulseaudio holds me off!!

Same here with SB X-Fi 5.1 USB. Works out of the box and no single problem with it.