Ask Slashdot: Stop PulseAudio From Changing Sound Settings?

New submitter cgdae writes Does anyone know how to stop PulseAudio/Pavucontrol from changing sound settings whenever there is a hardware change such as headphones being plugged in/out or docking/undocking my laptop ? I recently had to install PulseAudio on my Debian system because the Linux version of Skype started to require it. Ever since, whenever i dock/undock or use/stop using headphones, all sound disappears, and i have to go to Pavucontrol and make random changes to its 'Output Devices' or 'Speakers' or 'Headphones' tab, or mute/unmute things, or drag a volume slider which has inexplicably moved to nearly zero, until sound magically comes back again. I've tried creating empty PulseAudio config files in my home directory, and/or disabling the loading of various PulseAudio modules in /etc/pulse/*.conf, but i cannot stop PulseAudio from messing things up whenever there's a hardware change. It's really frustrating that something like PulseAudio doesn't have an easy-to-find way of preventing it from trying (and failing) to be clever.

[In case it's relevant, my system is a Lenovo X220 laptop, with Debian jessie, kernel 3.14-2-amd64. I run fvwm with an ancient config.]

Comments

are the debian support forums down?

[Selur]

Sounds more like a question for a support forum than for slashdot,...

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds more like a question for a support forum than for slashdot,...

It's part of a paid smear campaign, intended to establish a belief that Linux is difficult and unreliable. Have you noticed how every discussion about Linux/Foss on Slashdot is centered on these weird corner-cases that almost nobody in the real world ever sees?

That's because a certain mainstream OS vendor has a lab full of people trying to find flaws and publish them. DiceDot, of course, happily oblige$...

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[X0563511]

Don't forget to uninstall Pottering. PulseAudio was just the beginning.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[hackertourist]

Are any of them able to use the Skype network?

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[gstoddart]

And, can you talk to people who have Skype with them?

Or are you thinking everyone you know is going to start using some open source product to talk to you because you say so?

If they're not compatible with Skype, then they're not replacements for it.

Open Source isn't always the solution, especially when they're not compatible with the things they're supposed to replace.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[dshadowwolf]

Nah, I've had similar problems with PulseAudio in the past. Sometimes it's a vendor configuration issue and sometimes it's just that Pulse tries to be smart and fails at it. When I have no need for PA (never, these days, since it is required by Skype) I don't install it because of those problems I've had in the past. Lately I've been using Fedora 19 and Fedora 20 and have not had a problem. Nor have I had a problem with it running a recent OpenSUSE or an "alternative" distribution like Sabayon.

Calling someone asking a question like this a "smear campaign" against Linux - or, as another commenter has done, a "smear campaign agaisnt Lennart Poettering", well... I have a philosophical disagreement with Mr. Poettering over how systemd is consuming all kinds of other projects in the name of faster boot times. But I will not attempt to smear him, except to say that the way systemd has turned into something similar to the bloated beast that is the Windows 'svchost.exe' makes me think that the age of the classic Unix "do one thing and do it well" is over in Linux-land.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uninstall Skype Install any one a dozen open source package that do the same thing.

Works on almost any IP network, without any major configuration and allow you to make free calls to many and cheap calls to many networks. Please name that package? I've been looking for years.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilarious how there's always someone out there who not only has no problems with Linux whatsoever but they're also convinced that anyone who does must be full of shit.

Personally, I have issues with the output volume on every device in my system changing every time I plug in a particular USB webcam, just because it happens to include a microphone which somehow triggers something to decide to reset all of my audio settings. It's annoying as fuck if I'm trying to be quiet and accidentally bump that cable, causing the camera to come loose and reconnect, which then turns my volume up all the way and scares the shit out of me.

...and that's just the problem I have when doing "normal people" things. About once a year I decide to try playing with MIDI sequencers again, and end up trying to get Jack to perform well once again, but once again, it doesn't. I tried telling the people behind the project how to properly do real-time audio in a way that doesn't result in audio buffer under-runs, but I was unsuccessful in explaining to them how DMA works. (They insisted that once data was put in a DMA buffer, you couldn't just rewrite it any time you wished, you had to wait for the transfer to complete, as otherwise you'd crash your computer, as opposed to what would actually happen which is that the data read by the device would be a mix of the old and new data.) ...and to top it off, years ago I went through the trouble of obtaining an old SoundBlaster that does hardware wavetable synthesis, so that I don't have to rely on Jack to be able to do anything, but I've been unable to use it for five years because it requires a DMA buffer below 2GB to load the soundfont data but the kernel attempts to give it the highest address possible and no one can seem to work out a way to allow the utility that loads the soundfont data to request a buffer at a usable address, which isn't to say that they can't do that, it's just that they don't want to do it in an "ugly" way and thus it's just never going to happen because it'll mess up someone's perfectly elegant code, since as everyone knows, only relatively featureless code can be elegant.

That's because a certain mainstream OS vendor has a lab full of people trying to find flaws and publish them.

Yeah, it couldn't be honest people with honest problems. Anyway, just so you don't think I'm another puppet, I'll tell you that I installed Windows for a friend yesterday and getting that to work was a complete pain in the ass. It seems weird as hell that for as much as Linux sucks, Windows keeps finding a way to suck a little harder. It doesn't mean Linux doesn't suck though. It absolutely does, and there's no reason Linux has to settle for merely being better than Windows. Why can't it be perfect?

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pulseaudio was a royal PITA until about 5 years ago. By then the kinks have been worked out and it works rather well. The only thing worse than Pulseadudio was the cruft that it replaced. People who still complain about it either have very weird hardware or run old systems and just like to complain about old things...

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Jawnn]

It's part of a paid smear campaign, intended to establish a belief that Linux is difficult and unreliable. Have you noticed how every discussion about Linux/Foss on Slashdot is centered on these weird corner-cases that almost nobody in the real world ever sees?

Well... in this case, not so much. When it comes to audio support the linux landscape is a minefield of poorly documented, often unstable crap with poor interoperability. In other words, most of it is shit. None of it works well without considerable tweaking, after spending far to much time and effort running down solutions in those support forums. Don't get me wrong. I make my living running linux boxen. I am also a semi-serious audiophile and would love to use linux in that pursuit as well. Can't do it.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I found the Poettering!

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

> And, can you talk to people who have Skype with them?

No. It is their problem when they are incompatible.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

> Works on almost any IP network, without any major configuration

Just run openvpn to get IPv6 which you need anyway. I agree Linux OS has a problem it does not run Teredo automatically like MS-Windows does.

> and allow you to make free calls to many and cheap calls to many networks.

Skype is not cheap, it is 8x as expensive as local VoIP competitors.

> Please name that package? I've been looking for years.

I have good experience with Linphone and formerly Twinkle.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[cyberspittle]

Perhaps they can try this new web site called google.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anon E. Muss]

... the way systemd has turned into something similar to the bloated beast that is the Windows 'svchost.exe' ...

+1 to the anti-systemd sentiment.

-1 to using svchost.exe to make your case. svchost is just a container process. The real issue is the Windows architecture/philosophy that encourages a proliferation of services.

(I like Unix and I like Windows. Each has their place. Trying to turn one into the other is a big mistake.)

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Linux but am no expert and have had to deal with audio issues several times because either Ubuntu was too smart and fell on its backside or from trying to do something as simple as outputting sound through the onboard sound while also outputting sound through HDMI. Pulseaudio has settings to make such things easier. Its just too bad they sometimes fail to work when its supposed to be easier.

Alsa is a pita but at least config files are reachable that allow for doing nearly anything you wish. Yes it may be cryptic but at least there is support widely available.

You want piece of mind regarding sound settings? Uninstall PulseAudio and use Alsa and .asoundrc config files. It may take time to figure out how to config using Alsa but at least it won't try to outsmart you - it just stays as you set it.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Aighearach]

Yeah, or are just trolling. I'm going to say this whole post is a giant troll that dice fell for. They thought they were trolling linux, but they were really trolling systemd. Whoops!

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[MiPen]

I use ubuntu studio that is made for audiophiles and is XFCE by default with a customised low latency audio kernel built in. Its used as my TV media player PC. As for pulse audio doing weird things with Skype, l had that happen once. I ran the latest bleeding edge update options in Ubuntu studio and it somehow fixed itself.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a Skype issue with arrogant / crappy MS programmers adjusting the sys volume in response to ambiant noise. Just a guess, but wouldn't surprise me. Find something better / safer / more secure than Skype.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

I use plain old telephone when I do need to talk with Skype people. It is more convenient for me, what's the problem with that?

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Eravnrekaree]

What you want is a system that can be configured how you want it, not OSs that are hardwired to work one way or another that cannot be changed. There is no reason why Unix should be good at one thing and Windows good at another if the user can configure it to work the way they want and run just the services they need, but where the service they need is available if they need it. we need to get away from this "can't have vs. can have and must run" mentality. How about "can have and run only if you want".

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one bothers to pay for bad publicity on Slashdot. Fact is, no one here is influential enough to bother.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Aighearach]

I know, right? I use Skype because for $15/m I can have unlimitted calling to local numbers in Thailand, from the US. And can make unlimitted US calls, too. Outbound only, inbound costs extra. I have it for my wife.

There is nothing "open source" that could offer the services Skype offers. Yes, I'd rather use a generic service and be able to run generic SIP software, but the service would cost vastly more, and I don't have an actual technical need that isn't being met. It meets 2 needs: For my wife to call landline and cell phones in Thailand, and for me to have a service with automatic billing so I don't have to go to the store at all hours to buy overpriced phone cards.

It is the only commercial software we even have in the house, on any machine. So yes, we run a Skype install. Yes, if you have the default Skype setting to "automatically adjust mixer levels," it will rape and pillage your mixer settings, and give you fuzz for the trouble. No, that isn't PulseAudio's fault. The setting was broken in the old days when it used the OSS interface, too.

I don't mind running one commercial package. Probably most of the people here have some sort of Apple device in their home, which is commercial, or else use Photoslop (because they can't find the Gimp context menus) or else a console gaming platform with dozens (or more!) of commercial software packages.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[cgdae]

Apologies if people think i shouldn't have posted this question to slashdot. I did a fair amount of googling to try to figure things out, to no avail. I didn't know whether my sound problems were caused by Debian or PulseAudio, so i figured Slashdot would cover both bases.

Aside from wanting to find a fix for my audio problems, i think the issue of Skype requiring a particular sound library is worthy of discussion on slashdot, as it the general UI issue of whether 'clever' behaviour should be easy to disable.

Oh, and i'm most definitely not a Microsoft troll, e.g. my day job involves working on some fairly hard-core linux debugging software.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

Do you have any idea how expensive it is to call international numbers?

Use VoiP provider from your home country and pay only for the local call in your home country. I was calling that way from Japan in 2005.

If you really need to call arbitrary countries (I do not) use Betamax SIP provider, it provides international calls for IIRC USD 5/month.

Also, Skype is usually used for video calls,

That's an advantage I do not have to use video.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

International calls to your home country are cheap/free for VoIP using your home country VoIP provider. To call arbitrary countries use Betamax SIP provider with international calls for IIRC USD 5/month. Besides that at least in my home country Skype is 8x more expensive than SIP providers. And no video is an advantage.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

I use voice and video chat extensively, and using any option that is not Skype would cost me hundreds of dollars per month, while it costs me 50$ per year using Skype.

OMG "hundreds"? Use Betamax SIP provider (via one of its dealers) for USD 5/month, that is USD60/year. Yes, you have to pay slightly more to keep your freedoms.

Using your unknown software

Linphone

if you only talk with 3 other Linux tards

Bullshit, I call to non-SIP people/businesses via Linphone via SIP via local voocall.cz provider to their cell phones for such a low price I consider it free (USD5/month for me).

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[kaladorn]

Gaming in Linux still doesn't match up to what can be done on Windows.

And I have yet to find a spreadsheet of any sort that is as capable as Excel 2007. (2010 may be, but the online variant now isn't). I have tried most open source alternatives. I'd probably even try a pay-for alternative if I thought there was one for Linux that was as capable.

The free market sees why windows exists.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[kaladorn]

Skype has actually gotten considerably worse since MS bought it.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[icebike]

Who cares.
The network is hopelessly backdoored. Most people use skype just to talk to family and friends, and moving all of that to one of several TOX clients, or even to Google Hangouts is smarter than handing the entire conversation over to Microsoft.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[icebike]

Tox does video and voice.
Totally encrypted.
Not backdoored like skype is.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

BTW SIP can sure also do video and also encryption. I have no idea why Tox reinvents the wheel. But the original comment's argument was that with callee having only Skype one can use video via Skype. Via plain old telephone one really does not get video. One can call via 3G cell phone but then it is expensive. I am really not aware of any SIP-to-POTS provider who would transfer also video. (But as I said I do not care about video myself.)

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[ultranova]

How about "can have and run only if you want".

No, because to do so every program needs to support 2^n different configurations, where n is the number of services they could potentially make use of. Most developers aren't going to bother, so in practice you either run a set of services or don't run the program. And at that point it makes sense to define a standard set which a program can expect a server or desktop to have.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Good luck getting my mom to use it.

Shit, I've been trying for ten fucking years to get her to quit using HUGE BOLD HTML for her emails. I've explained to her over and over again that she can use plain text, set her mail client to display it at a size that's comfortable for her, and let me view it at a size that's reasonable for me. And failed. Too complicated/scary.

Now... You were saying...?

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[marcello_dl]

Have you tried using pulseaudio just for skype? like identifying which libraries gets used, put them in (folder), starting manually the pulseaudio daemon if there is one, and invoke skype from terminal prefixing it with LD_LIBRARY_PATH=(folder)?
Failing that, I had 32 bit skype in a chroot because the rest of the system was 64 it worked. One day it keep failing authorization, and then i got an email telling me i was using an outdated skype version. That must be the microsoft way.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[icebike]

Nobody transfers video to POTS, so it hardly matters that you are unaware of such.

TOX really didn't re-invent the wheel. They simply re-deployed the original concept of Skype, with public nodes located via Torrent-like technology and encryption keys that are in the hands of the client, and unknown to the nodes or anyone else. And they did it with open-source code.

As to why they did it, you would have only to review what Microsoft did to Skype and who they did it FOR to understand that Skype is totally backdoored, and unsafe to even have on your machine. There is no way microsoft will ever recoup the price they paid for Skype. Someone else footed the bill for them.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype on Windows and OSX got worse. Skype on Linux got better since MS bought it. Hard to imagine, but some of us remember how bad it used to be.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[dshadowwolf]

With the way systemd has consumed other projects - like udev - and has become a required dependency of others - ISTR that this is true of at least one part of Gnome as of Gnome 3.14 (oddly said part does not, AFAIK, have a non-systemd counterpart even though it possibly could) - the ability to choose a different init for Linux is becoming restricted.

In truth there is an idea I saw somewhere on the net in the last couple of months about a way to fix a lot of the problems - percieved or otherwise - with systemd. It involved having a very small, almost impossible to screw up program running at PID 1 that redirected reparent attempts off to another process and had stuff like the management of starting/stopping daemons as a third process. At no point would that setup require having any daemon or system service built into it.

However... I am not a skilled enough programmer to think I could make a good attempt at such a system, though I'd be willing to contribute to such, even if it is for reviewing code for quality and acting as one of the voices of reason against bad ideas that might be suggested.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Zontar The Mindless]

...no normal phones have the ability to video chat.

Where I live, a "normal phone" is a smartphone.

Lots of smartphones support video calls. Both of mine do, at least. They're both off-the-shelf Samsung Galaxys--one's an S1 and the other's an S3.

Which reminds me, I'm about due to sign another 2-year contract with my telco so I can get a free S5 and catch up with my wife, who already has one. Which also supports video calling.

It's also hella cheaper to use Skype for this than to dial it directly, even for local video calls.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Zontar The Mindless]

You can't ring POTS phones with it, so it's not a substitute. Please quit spamming.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[ColaMan]

Hi there, Tox pusher. Did you not even read the very first few sentences he posted? The one that said :
I use Skype because for $15/m I can have unlimitted calling to local numbers in Thailand, from the US. And can make unlimitted US calls, too. Outbound only, inbound costs extra. I have it for my wife.

So you like Tox. That's great. It doesn't have all the features of Skype. Some of that is good (one-click government eavesdropping) some of that is bad (POTS integration). And yes, one of the 'features' of Skype is the fact that it's got a very large user base. So you're not just convincing Grandma to swap over, you need to convince Grandma's friends that she also talks to, and so on and so forth. And they just don't see the need for 'secure encrypted communication that only they have the keys to'. They're just (mostly) talking shit and waving to each other.

Open your eyes a bit and admit those problems, and people will start taking your opinion more seriously. Tox may be a solution for you (and maybe me, it looks interesting), but it's not a solution for the masses, because they already have an adequate solution.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[short]

> Nobody transfers video to POTS, so it hardly matters that you are unaware of such.

I should have written s/POTS/PSTN/ where 3G is a part of it. Someone could transfer 3G<->SIP/TOX, I am not so sure no one in the world does it.

> to understand that Skype is totally backdoored, and unsafe to even have on your machine

Any proprietary software is unsafe to have on my machine, any proprietary software can be backdoored, therefore one has to handle any proprietary software as an already backdoored one.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[BarbaraHudson]

I up-voted this in the firehose because sound is still a problem. As are disappearing sound settings. Ignore the noise (pun intended :-)

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Eravnrekaree]

From what I understand of systemd is that you can still set it to spawn your own init system, whether they be shell scripts or a more tradtional init program and then configure that to run your programs. All you need to do is disable the services from starting from systemd and then configure systemd to start your own init script to start your stuff. Problem solved.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[dshadowwolf]

I'm not sure if my experiences are common, but your first point is changing - GoG.com and Steam both have lots of games that work exceptionally well in Linux (in fact, Steam has a whole category of Linux games that is, apparently, over 700 strong and fast approaching 1000).

Your second point, however, seems like it might be accurate. I have not checked the capabilities of LibreOffice's spreadsheet in a while - preferring instead to do my budget and such using Google's spreadsheet tools - but around two years ago I had problems getting a spreadsheet in LibreOffice to properly cascade values through various formula in related cells. This might just have been user error, but the fact that it occurred at all says something.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[dshadowwolf]

And why, if its not doing what it was created to do, then, would I keep it around at all? This type of "you can do what you want, but it needs to be this way" crap is why I've stepped out of most online and open-source communities. I can see the "this is how it's done" type of thing for electronics - most of the time there is only one way to do something in electronics...

You know what, fuck it - I'm spending too much time discussing this and not enough time working on the API wrapper-layer I need to create for some paying work. I'll check back Sunday or Monday.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[tshawkins]

All varients except the android version, have deteriorated over the last year or so. I use skype a lot to call into conference calls, i have a Mac, Linux desktop and large android tablet, and one by one each version has stopped generating recognisble touch tones that can be used to drive the conferencing services (more than 1) . If the android version goes the same way, i will have to give up on skype.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Khyber]

"Pulseaudio was a royal PITA until about 5 years ago. By then the kinks have been worked out and it works rather well."

Nope, still fails for me on a modern dual-core 64-bit system.

" The only thing worse than Pulseadudio was the cruft that it replaced."

Not even close. OSS worked more reliably and still does.

" People who still complain about it either have very weird hardware or run old systems and just like to complain about old things..."

2012 laptop. 1.6GHz 64-bit dual core, 8GB RAM, 6-channel surround through optical, typical RealTek. Not even close to weird or old.

I've been using Linux since 1998. PulseAudio is a piece of shit, period. I can't even unplug my headphones without having to reset three volume/audio options to make my speakers output.

Pulseaudio can't even do ASIO properly. It's a broken piece of crap.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[MiPen]

Says the anonymous coward.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Khyber]

"No, because to do so every program needs to support 2^n different configurations, where n is the number of services they could potentially make use of."

And this is why we have LIBRARIES.

Fuck, even the most basic MUCK server has the ability to program in MUF/MPI (and some have even added in Python libraries for more extensibility.)

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Blaskowicz]

The problem is, 700 games including expansion packs versus out of my ass 50,000 games on Windows.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[JohnVanVliet]

that it dose
i was one of the FIRST people to use pulse in fedora 6
now back then there were issues
but

Almost 10 years have past and those issues are no more

pulse on it's own WILL NOT JUST CHANG SETTINGS

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[zidium]

The way I'm treated trying to find a solution to this SAME problem, I thought I was the only one!

I **loved** OSS audio about a decade ago. So much better than ALSA! PulseAudio *ruined* it for me.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Lodragandraoidh]

But, why can't I just rip out systemd? Oh - because so many service projects/distros are only supporting systemd today that you have to have it around if anything you download in the distro happens to use the API of the non-POSIX POS that is systemd.

systemd core files are not written to disk as files - they are written to the binary log file - you have to extract the data first to run debug.

systemd log files are binary; you can't run grep or other text parsing tools against it for automation - unless you extract the data first.

systemd encourages abandonment of POSIX compliance - which is a key component of the interoperability between various flavors of Unix and Linux (I loved being able to write a shell script on a Unix machine, and copy it over to a Linux machine with little to no modification). Dennis Ritchie must be spinning in his grave right now at this bastardization of his brain child.

The only way to avoid this is to roll your own distro - or support distros that stay clear of it (I was shocked to hear even Slackware was considering support for systemd - given that it has always been as close to SystemV Unix-like that you could get in the Linux world. Thankfully - so far they have not succumbed.)

For people who run desktop machines for their own use - running applications in user space for the most part - systemd may be fine. For those of us running servers, with many man hours of system administrative automation in place - this spells catastrophe in the form of forced obsolescence of our custom code and automation.

As I read in one article - if systemd is allowed to prevail, then we can all kiss the days of an administrator controlling his system his own way goodbye. It will split the work of people who do development - and at some point they will not be able to continue; one case in point: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/on-lkml-an-open-letter-to-the-linux-world/

From that article:

Last week I asked the SDDM developers to reconsider their decision no longer to support ConsoleKit because Slackware does not have systemd or logind and thus we need to keep using ConsoleKit. The answer could be expected: “answer is no because ConsoleKit is deprecated and is not maintained anymore” and therefore I had to patch it in myself. Of course, the ConsoleKit successor systemd-logind, written by the same team that gave us all the *Kit crap, depends on PAM which we also do not have in Slackware. One of the fellow core developers in Slackware, who is intimately familiar with the KDE developers community, has heard from multiple sources that KDE is moving towards a hard dependency on systemd (probably because they are going to need the functionality of systemd-logind). We all know what that means, folks! It will be the day that I must stop delivering you new KDE package releases for Slackware. That’ll be the day.

So this turn of events might be nice for some script kiddie sitting in his mother's basement....but for the rest of us who have to get work done with and through Linux - this is a royal pain in the arse.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Lodragandraoidh]

Don't forget to uninstall Pottering. PulseAudio was just the beginning.

Is there a compile switch for that, or do I need to write a script? UninstallPoettering.sh

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[mikelieman]

Yeah, but since Mechwarrior 2, they've all pretty much blown.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Barsteward]

have a read of this section from this article for Arch for a possible solution https://wiki.archlinux.org/ind...

Journald in conjunction with syslog
Compatibility with a classic syslog implementation can be provided by letting systemd forward all messages via the socket /run/systemd/journal/syslog. To make the syslog daemon work with the journal, it has to bind to this socket instead of /dev/log (official announcement). The syslog-ng package in the repositories automatically provides the necessary configuration.
As of systemd 216 the default journald.conf for forwarding to the socket is no. This means you will need to set the option ForwardToSyslog=yes in /etc/systemd/journald.conf to actually use syslog-ng with journald. See Syslog-ng#Overview for details.
If you use rsyslog instead, it is not necessary to change the option because rsyslog pulls the messages from the journal by itself.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Damouze]

Skype on Android has this nasty "bug" (although people might be tempted to call it a feature): you can't really close it. Believe me, I have tried. I have all but given up on it. Even if you have all the notifications for it disabled and forcibly stop it, it will respawn automatically within a show period of time. Were it not for the fact that I need it for work, I would not allow an app like that to even be installed on my cellphone or my tablet.

With regard to systemd: if the only choices you have are broken ones, you don't really have a choice now, do you? On the one hand you have systemd, which is bloated beyond repair. On the other hand you have all those software packages that won't run otherwise because they depend on it.

DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR TO ANYONE AT ALL?

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[ultranova]

And this is why we have LIBRARIES.

And when someone complains they should be able to install only the libraries they want, what layer of abstraction comes to rescue then?

Making the entire system an onion doesn't solve the issue but does add complexity, and it's completely irrational to do so just because someone wants a custom system out of the box, especially since they won't be any happier with n+1 library dependencies either.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, right? I use Skype because for $15/m I can have unlimitted calling to local numbers in Thailand, from the US. And can make unlimitted US calls, too. Outbound only, inbound costs extra. I have it for my wife.

If your wife charges you $15/min for a Skype conversation, I'm gonna break the news to you myself and tell you she's probably not really your wife. Does her number start with "1-900-...." ?

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Khyber]

"It doesn't make sense to say 'Pulseaudio can't do ASIO'."

I can tell you've never had a SBLive card under Linux.

Also, ALSA is laggy as shit, hence why I'll still install ASIO drivers for a sound card if possible.

Don't believe me? Go try it for yourself. Un-mute your line-in, plug in a guitar. Try to keep steady timing with ~90ms latency.

Even Windows XP's non-ASIO stuff would give me instantaneous feedback if I simply un-muted the line-in.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[udippel]

Despite of AC:
Consider yourself modded up once!

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Khyber]

"what layer of abstraction comes to rescue then?"

The base coding languages, which are abstractions of the machine language. Those are the only libraries that should be installed, in the first place. Everything else should reference those.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used a SBLive in Linux, and had low latency audio working perfectly well.

> Also, ALSA is laggy as shit, hence why I'll still install ASIO drivers for a sound card if possible.

You still do not understand what ALSA or ASIO are.

ALSA can give as low a latency as the hardware is capable of. If you experience latency, then the problem is the buffer size and frames per period you are using in your audio application.

When you use a low latency professional sound server like JackD on Linux, it talks to the ALSA drivers. So if the ALSA drivers were high latency, low latency professional audio on Linux would be impossible.

ALSA is the lowest level of the sound stack, so talking to it directly gives the lowest latency. Pulseaudio runs on top of ALSA, as do all sound servers on Linux.

ASIO was originally created by Steinberg to allow their Cubase software to talk directly to the sound card driver, bypassing the Windows sound server. It's the same as talking directly to ALSA. (The nearest equivelent to JackD on Windows would be Steinberg's Rewire.)

> Even Windows XP's non-ASIO stuff would give me instantaneous feedback if I simply un-muted the line-in.

Most likely, you were using direct analog passthrough within the sound card in XP, and software monitoring in Linux. Both paths are also possible in ALSA on Linux.

I am a professional audio engineer with 25 years of experience, so these things do matter to me.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[FrandGunk]

Actually I think Dennis Ritchie is quite proud of his brain children the BSD's.

Re: are the debian support forums down?

[Man On Pink Corner]

most of the time there is only one way to do something in electronics...

Wow, that's a new one on me. What would be an example?

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Khyber]

"I've used a SBLive in Linux, and had low latency audio working perfectly well."

Yea, after you did what, install the kX driverset which comes with an ASIO driver? (I helped design that.)

"You still do not understand what ALSA or ASIO are."

Given the statement directly above, you might wish to think again on that.

"ALSA can give as low a latency as the hardware is capable of."

Since when? I'm still getting 1/4 second latency using ALSA trying to play Wolf:ET. That's just on playback.

"ALSA is the lowest level of the sound stack, so talking to it directly gives the lowest latency. Pulseaudio runs on top of ALSA, as do all sound servers on Linux."

I see you've never heard of OSS. It sure as fuck doesn't talk to ALSA at all.

"Most likely, you were using direct analog passthrough within the sound card in XP, and software monitoring in Linux. Both paths are also possible in ALSA on Linux."

Nope. SBLive does not have a direct analog pass-through (at least this revision, with the additional DRM restricting the 'What U Hear' option) This is simply testable across several OSes - XP/2K give no lag. Vista and 7 introduce about ~150ms lag. OSS gets me ~20ms latency. ALSA gets me ~50. Pulseaudio can't even handle it and clips the fuck out of my line-in.

"I am a professional audio engineer with 25 years of experience, so these things do matter to me."

I can't tell. Bet you're the type that compressor-limits the fuck out of everything, too.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[deek]

It's a massive improvement from a year or so ago. No reasonable person would expect that all, or even the majority, of Windows games would suddenly have native Linux ports in such a short time period. Personally, I'm quite amazed that it's grown as fast as it has, and I'm sure that Steam and Humble Bundle are to thank for that.

Gaming on Linux may never quite match what Windows has to offer, but I can confidently say that Linux has now become a viable gaming platform. I haven't had to boot into Windows for a gaming session for, hmmm let me think, at least 5 months now.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[danbuter]

My ONLY major issue with Linux is that a lot of the devs think that newer is automatically better. See PulseAudio/KDE4/Gnome 3/systemd/Unity/etc. They get blinded by the new bling and just abandon all of the older stuff that works because it is boring. No one wants to bug-fix or complete that final 10% of polish that would make the program great.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[ultranova]

The base coding languages, which are abstractions of the machine language. Those are the only libraries that should be installed, in the first place.

I don't really see how an interpreter or a JIT compiler would help the problem, or even be a library for that matter. The issue isn't how to make the same code run on multiple architectures, after all, but how to make the program logic flexible enough to handle the absence of a service yet make full use of it when present.

Also, most languages are still stuck with only standard input and output without third-party libraries, which are typically an awful fit. This is not the 80's anymore, that hasn't cut it for the long time now, and not really even then. Most applications aren't headless servers, and require graphics and proper UI.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[Stuarticus]

I don't want to sound facetious but really, the SBLive is a nearly twenty year old card now. Fair enough it should work but getting a bee in your bonnet about it is a bit mad. If the card is giving you so much trouble do what any sane person did 10 years ago and throw it away and buy something better.

Re:are the debian support forums down?

[mgcarley]

To be fair, Windows 7 isn't exactly a champ in this respect either - unplugging headphones or USB audio devices etc can cause the sound to just disappear and you have to fiddle around to get it back. I'm have a Core i7-based HP Probook that exhibits this sort of behaviour sometimes (but not all the time).

Editor Troll

[twistedcubic]

This is an obvious troll, but not from the OP. This is a troll by the editor, Timothy, to encourage discussion of the PulseAudio author, Lennart Poettering, and systemd.

Re:Editor Troll

[dshadowwolf]

It very well could be, but why not ignore the trolling or turn it on it's head by actually answering the question and not getting into deep discussions or flame wars about the creator of the software in question?

(Note: as I've said in another comment, I have a philosophical difference of opinion with Mr. Poettering, but I refuse to attempt a smear campaign - even though I might have contributed to one in the past, I've come to the conclusion that it's not worth my time)

Re:Editor Troll

[cobbaut]

Maybe, but it is a persistent and annoying problem.
Whenever I unplug the audio, all sound is gone until i start xfce4-mixer and enable sound again. (Retina Macbook with Debian) A solution would be welcome.

Re:Editor Troll

[Rich0]

Yup. If posted on a typical distro support forum this would get a clear answer in about 3 posts.

Instead we'll get 300 "helpful" posts on slashdot where the closest to being helpful comes out to "stop using skype and pulseaudio" but most will be off-topic banter about Lennart and systemd...

Slashdot must be dying and this stuff has to be some kind of deliberate effort to attract eyeballs by making slashdot the premiere place for flamewars. Half the summaries and headlines are completely misleading as well, generally designed to maximize sensation and banter.

News articles should give everything away in the first three lines, and should give half of everything away in the headline. They shouldn't be teasers. You shouldn't have to read the original article to figure out what the summary got wrong. If I'm in a hurry I want the condensed version of the news, not misinformation substituted for news.

I don't know why I even bother here any more. The changes to the discussion system were annoying enough. It seems like the content has gone downhill as well.

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

Is it really smearing when you look at how someone's last major project went when judging how well their current project is likely to work?

Re: Editor Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, you've been told the problem. Skype lost meaningful Linux support, as well as safety for its users of end to end encryption when MS bought it. Now go away.

Re:Editor Troll

[Eravnrekaree]

It is not a troll. The term "troll" is an abused and meaningless term and without really any identifiable meaning anymore except one that is entirely subjective. You assume that if someone posts something that you disagree with that automatically it means that they are just trying to make a strike at you, when in fact its most likely that its an honestly held position. Maybe the initial meaning of the term troll was a message posted with opinions that are not honestly held by the poster, the problem is you HAVE NO IDEA and cannot tell intuitively if a poster honestly believes in what they post or not, which means that it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to tell if a message is a troll or not. That is why the troll identifier is meaningless and without any value whatsoever and is just a tool to be abused by those who want to silence opinions and views other than their own. Its a censorship tool in other words used by the weak, shallow minded and intellectually bankrupt who would rather censor others rather than put up a thoughtful and civil rebuttal. Thats why the troll label should be abolished.

Re:Editor Troll

[Aighearach]

Except he probably just needs to turn off "automatically adjust mixer levels" in Skype, and stop blaming PulseAudio. The hate leads to the blame, in this case. If he didn't know what to hate, (for reasons that are logic errors) then he'd have to ask instead, "what software is connected to my sound subsystem and adjusts the mixer levels automatically?" That would be a question that might lead to the answer. But starting from logic errors and hate, they seek out PulseAudio to blame it. And are wrong, mean, and dumb asses, all at the same time.

Also some audio players fiddle the mixer, when allowed. They think they're helping. I personally went back to an old unforked xmms. Still compiles!

Re:Editor Troll

[Aighearach]

You don't even have to stop using Skype. You only have to:

1) Not decide to blame PulseAudio even before you know what is wrong
2) Open the Skype settings
3) Turn off the correctly named default setting "automatically adjust mixer levels."

For most people, who aren't part of some sort of hateful social movement focused on attacking one man for having a good job, that is actually only a 2 step process. But even neckbeards should be able to manage it with the extra step.

Re:Editor Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually start by deinstalling pulseaudio. Fixes the problems every time.

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

I see. So you would never smear a surgeon by deciding that you will not be operated on by someone who kills 80% of his patients even though the surgery should have less than 1% mortality?

You believe people should be promoted even if all of their work so far has had to be redone?

You would happily have your car re-painted by a guy whose car has overspray on all of the glass and trim?

You see no reason not to go to the restaurant that gave you food poisoning the last two times you went there?

What a strangely dysfunctional world you must live in!

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

Most people who care at all about audio kill off PA. ALSA handles it much better by itself. I killed off PA when I got tired of having all video I watched look like the dubbed martial arts movies where the lips and the audio have nothing to do with each other.

You might be surprised to learn that many people don't install PA at all and things work just fine.

Re:Editor Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

that doesn't follow.

the earlier projects were train wrecks of ever increasing size and scope. we're supposed to ignore that now and give the guy access to a bigger train, one which holds all our eggs in all our baskets? that's insane.

Re:Editor Troll

[dshadowwolf]

As far as I know, Pulse Audio is the only other major project that Lennart Poettering has been the lead developer for that has been shown to be broken in major ways for any length of time. Another of his projects is Avahi, which appears to work perfectly and not have any major problems. To point at his decision with PulseAudio to try and mimic the MacOS and Windows sound systems - and the repeated breakages introduced by that code until quite late in its lifetime (and after it's functionality was no longer actually needed) - and claim that it proves he does not and cannot write good code or control the scope of a project is a smear. You need more than one previous time something has happened to link to its current incarnation to show a pattern.

Yes, systemd is growing wildly and doesn't seem to be constrained to just being an init-system (instead actually replacing some system services that modern linux userlands expect to see) but twice can be a coincidence. (Three times, however, is "enemy action")

Re:Editor Troll

[dshadowwolf]

Agreed. PulseAudio was great when ALSA didn't exist, but since ALSA provides 99% of the same functionality, having it replicated like this is insane. Sadly a number of companies producing non-open programs for Linux rely on PulseAudio, so removing it completely is currently impossible.

Re:Editor Troll

[dshadowwolf]

As I've stated elsewhere, Lennart appears to be or have been lead on two other major projects - PulseAudio and Avahi. Pulse somewhat meets your description, but Avahi does not.

I know you might find this hard to believe, but I was serious when I suggested turning the stated "attempted troll" around on the troll. Sadly, your comment - a mix of an ad hominem and strawman attack - does just the opposite. Please stop - it does no-one any good and consumes time and effort best spent in other places (like paying work).

Re:Editor Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you're completely wrong. This is a known bug in ALSA which has been fixed upstream but is still present in Debian stable.

This is the patch which introduced the bug:

http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-utils.git;a=commit;h=de7c3eff0e371ce155403bbcdcf81ee79266fa0f (note author lol)

And this is the patch that fixed it:

http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-utils.git;a=commit;h=ef0e588c76fbad4112193d311e51a60d18b44282

Re:Editor Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

PulseAudio was great when ALSA didn't exist

Considering ALSA predates PA by 6 years, thats quite a feat.

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

He was a co-developer on Avahi and was implementing an already defined API. For the most part though, Avahi just handles the hostname resolution which is a small project. It may (or may not) be capable of more but I have never seen anything more used in practice.

Systemd more closely resembles pulseaudio in scope. I doubt there would be many complaints about pulseaudio if it was only used for the system beep.

System init is much too important to risk on that track record without some really good evidence of a strong design. The hairball dependency tree suggests this is heading in the pulseaudio direction, not the avahi direction.

Re:Editor Troll

[cgdae]

Ah yes, this fixes things, thanks.

[I'm not sure why the problem started when i installed the new Skype andPulseAudio, but i'm not too concerned about that now.]

Thanks.

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

If you want to plug your ears and sing La La La, it's your business really. Hope it works out for you.

Re:Editor Troll

[Randle_Revar]

>PulseAudio was great when ALSA didn't exist,

ALSA not only existed, but was the standard in Linux for years before PA (then PolypAudio) was created.

ALSA - 1998
ALSA as default - 2003 (2.6.0)
PA 0.9 - 2006
PA default in Ubuntu - 2008

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

I have no idea where you got the idea that pulseaudio is considered best of breed. Mostly it's considered something you're better off removing if you can. I say that as an actual professional who gave it every opportunity to work.

Just to add to the pain, 10 years later the documentation is still a crying shame. That's fine for some things, but for system software you want everyone to use, it will not do.

Re:Editor Troll

[thegarbz]

Plugging your ears and singing la la la is not the same as waiting to get a full picture before making an informed decision.

But feel free to keep freaking the hell out, because ... fuck Poettering I guess?

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

If you think that is why I prefer not to be locked in to systemd and pa, you have been singing through the whole discussion, but as I said, your business, though I ask that you not waste people's time by asking questions when you won't listen to the answer.

Re:Editor Troll

[BitwiseX]

I personally went back to an old unforked xmms. Still compiles!

Well doesn't that just whip the open source llama's ass!

Re:Editor Troll

[msauve]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Re:Editor Troll

[Aighearach]

I have no idea where you got the idea that pulseaudio is considered best of breed.

By all the distros using it. The proof, right there in the pudding.

Before PulseAudio, linux audio sucked. Everything else was generic and networked, but audio sucked hard. Even just having multiple audio devices on a single computer was painful. Workarounds typically required an app to be restarted to switch audio devices, mostly because of deficiencies in the APIs.

With PulseAudio that was fixed, audio is a normal citizen, generic, with both a modern API and backwards compatibility. Now those same old apps, unaltered, can be moved between audio devices transparently, with no restart. Plus, networked audio is vastly more capable, able to use standard APIs instead of having to live totally outside of the normal sound ecosystem.

Were there early bugs in implementation? Yes. But that isn't PulseAudio's fault, that is the distros fault. They probably should have waited another year before doing the changeover. People are still hating on PA because of early bugs that were fixed years ago. Haters hate, but they don't read or think, so once they're told it sucks, it sucks forever. But distros hire actual professionals to make these decisions, and even the ones that weren't using PA yet during those early bugs... are using it now. Why? Space-Alien mind-control beams? Or, it is better than the alternatives?

All that is also true for systemd, except with an extra helping of known lies and a doubling of personal attacks.

Re:Editor Troll

[sjames]

The part you're missing is that it costs nothing to throw it in the distro. That doesn't mean anyone is actually using it instead of going direct to ALSA most of the time.

The same distros also support legacy OSS, is that best of breed too? More likely, both are supported should the user run against a commercial app (like skype) that for some reason demands it.

I suppose it could be called best of breed among userspace sound daemons in the same sense that a saw with all but 1 tooth broken off is best of breed among saws with no teeth.

But distros hire actual professionals to make these decisions

Is that the same professionals who:

They probably should have waited another year before doing the changeover.

Apparently you don't mind 'smearing' all 'professionals', just the ones that are inconvieniant for you.

Re:Editor Troll

[Aighearach]

it can be slightly tricky, I agree at least with that much. Mostly for notifications that don't keep a connection to the sound system open; they're not connected long enough to adjust the per-app level in the mixer.

That is a case where I liked the older behavior better, but the new behavior is actually better for regular users. In the old days there were often three different volume levels to adjust, master, PCM, and in-app. Regular users would get the settings hosed, and have lots of hiss and pop because they didn't have the different gains balanced properly for their sound card. The new system, regular users can just slide the main volume, or open the mixer and change it per-app, and it works pretty well. But the per-app is relative to the other apps running.

So the technique now is to get the notification system to play a long sound, with the media player running, and then adjust the per-app volume. Then PulseAudio will remember that setting, at least as well as is possible until you've fiddled the levels enough that the relative volumes can't be maintained. Apps that use an external CLI player for notifications can be set by playing a music file with the CLI player, and adjusting the relative volume. This is how I have to adjust the move volume in xboard (an old internet chess client).

Things worked "better" before in some cases, but the cases that sucked before are fixed now. For example, xboard uses play or aplay for notifications, and has no in-app volume control. Before that was fine as long as you only have 1 such program running, and everything else had in-app volume. I could set the main volume for the level for xboard, and then set the in-app volume in xmms or mplayer. But that means you couldn't have the app tied to PCM volume, which was usually the better setting. So it didn't actually work better at all, even an advanced user had to fiddle and futz it, and you still couldn't get the volume you wanted if you wanted the "wrong" one to be louder. And if two apps didn't have their own volume control, then you couldn't get those apps to have different volume.

And I was using Skype back when it used OSS or ALSA for sound. The default "automatically adjust mixer levels" was even more buggy and wrecked more havoc back then than it does now.

Stop using PulseAudio

[Anonymous Coward]

$ pulseaudio --kill

There, that ought to do it.

Re:Stop using PulseAudio

[X0563511]

chmod -x `which pulseaudio` should help prevent it from recurring...

Feature not a bug

[Anonymous Coward]

Its just returning to the last master volume setting you had when the headphones were plugged in. You should be seeing Master change between two values when you switch, just adjust that of you want to change it. Every other OS does this as well.

If you aren't seeing that intended behavior then go report it to Debian not Slashdot.

Re:Feature not a bug

[X0563511]

Can you turn it off? No? Bug.

Assuming you know better than a user (when it comes to output) is always a bug.

Re:Feature not a bug

[sjames]

It doesn't seem like that is it. He plugs in headphones, volume goes away. He sets volume to something reasonable. That reasonable settinmg SHOULD then be considered the last master volume setting he had when the headphones were plugged in, but apparently that doesn't happen.

Re:Feature not a bug

[dargaud]

I have no idea what 'master' is even supposed to mean. Since the device that is in use is actually selected in the [Audio settings][Device Preference], what is the point of having a 'master' ?

Re:Feature not a bug

[Qzukk]

I have no idea what 'master' is even supposed to mean.

Once upon a time when ye were but a wee lad, we had sound cards with multiple channels for cd audio, midi output, wav output and so on. Legends say some cards even had separate controls for left and right speakers, and many a story was told of people who heard ghostly music through one speaker as if they were only hearing half of the song.

Back then, you could adjust those channels separately or use the "master volume control" to set all of them at once.

Now that we have per-app mixing capabilities and volume controls we still have a master audio control, only now it's in software instead of in the soundcard.

Re:Feature not a bug

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a bug in alsa's udev rules which caused volume save/restore on hardware changes to not work properly. (Pulseaudio is not responsible for doing this at all, it is down to alsa and udev.) This was fixed upstream back in January but OP's Debian system probably hasn't gotten the fix yet.

Here is the fix: http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2014-January/071156.html

Ironically the original broken rules were written by Lennart, so even though this has nothing to do with pulseaudio it's still his fault.

Re:Feature not a bug

[Khyber]

" Every other OS does this as well."

I can assure you Windows sure does not from 95-Win 7. Not even the intelligent RealTek drivers with jack-sensing do that.

Re:Feature not a bug

[Khyber]

Ah, good old ISA sound cards. Potentiometers for volume control. REAL power amps on-board.

Sound cards today suck.

Re:Feature not a bug

[dargaud]

Hmmm, so, is this 'master' control something we can ignore nowadays ?

Re:Feature not a bug

[Qzukk]

Sure, if you don't want to change the volume of your audio, you can ignore the audio control.

Or you could open your mixer app of choice and turn up or down each individual program one at a time separately instead of using the master control to turn them all up or down together.

Both options will allow you to ignore the master volume control.

Re:Feature not a bug

[skids]

That is pretty funny.

It's not all there is to it, though. I applied that fix manually and pulseaudio still screws with the subchannels when it starts. It doesn't just set the master, it maxes the speaker channel and mutes the woofer. Pretty annoying. Why can't all the sound utilities just get along?

Editor Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pretty good example of the half assed work. Seems a reasonable place to start.

+1

[inflamed]

X201 same issue.

Re:+1

[dshadowwolf]

I have used a T61p, a T400 and am now using a T510 - all have had PulseAudio installed because of Skype or another program that required it. I have not had a problem with it on these systems at all. All three of those ran OpenSUSE 12.3, Fedora 19 or Fedora 20. The problem here might be that the hardware does things that Pulse doesn't expect, which throws off whatever heuristics or simple selection code PA might be using. I know that with the Dell Inspiron 1420 I had about 7 years ago there was an issue where PA would act up if I plugged in headphones while the machine was plugged in and then unplugged the machine and pulled the headphones. That issue was strange, but it might have similar roots to what has been asked about here. I'd suggest contacting the Debian folks and possibly the PA folks themselves, as this issue would be of interest to both groups.

Get thee back under that bridge

[ihtoit]

PDNFTT. ...and to the OP: try posting in the correct forum. Hint: it isn't Slashdot.

Re:Bring Back the Soundblaster

[ArcadeMan]

Damn right it did!

Right after you moved the jumper to change the address because of a conflict with your printer, moved the jumper to change the IRQ because of a conflict with your modem and moved the jumper to change the DMA because of a conflict with your HDD controller.

Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[goruka]

Disclaimer: I wrote plenty of open source audio apps for linux, even worked with professional audio hardware with embedded linux.

Pulseaudio is just another victim of the attitude from the linux kernel developers of kicking a problem to userland when they should really be solving it.
Userspace audio mixers are OK for many applications, such as a video player, desktop sounds, listening to mp3s, etc. as long as such applications don't need low latency. If you need videogames, pro-audio stuff, or even real-time video editing you need low latency and here is the problem happens. You need somehow a way to ensure that the low latency audio thread gets notification quickly and gets priority in the scheduler (because the buffers are small), while the regular latency audio just needs to accumulate more data into buffers.

But the problem is, that you have only one DAC, and different streams might request different configuration parameters, such as bit depth, sampling rate, channels, etc. In any serious OS, the kernel will open a stream with the maximum settings for real-time, and will ensure it gets the needed attention, while it mixes and resamples the audio that comes from the regular OS sound buffers over it. Linux kernel developers are against this, and the justification is that resampling should not happen in the kernel. As a result, asks user space to solve the problem. Pulseaudio is an attempt to solve that problem, and does what the kernel should be doing in userspace, but unfortunately it just doesn't work very well. Linux is not a "real time" OS and scheduling can still fuck you your user-space audio.

Back in the day, OSS handled this perfectly, but when it was replaced by ALSA (an extremely bloated and over-designed API and driver architecture) hell began, so please don't blame PulseAudio for this, this is purely the fault of kernel developers.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Truekaiser]

They made alsa so they would not be used as free bug testers and squashers like they did when the OSS sound system was in the kernel.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Anonymous Coward]

This FUD needs to stop. PulseAudio is not for low latency audio and never was. Further, low-latency in usespace audio has been brilliantly worked out for nearly a decade now with the Jack daemon (JACKd). http://jackaudio.org/ That this has been "kicked to userspace" by the kernel devs is a non-statement: it *does* belong in userspace and intelligently engineered systems, with low-latency in mind, work beautifully from userspace.

Please do not attack the kernel.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[goruka]

Neither ALSA (through dmix) nor Jackd can mix both high latency and low latency audio.
Dmix can mix many userspace high latency streams, or one low latency stream but not both.
Jackd is only for low latency
Pulseaudio can mix both, but it's not as efficient as a kernel solution and it's quite dangerous (because it's SCHED_FIFO)
4Front OSS could do both in kernel and it worked extremely well.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[ToasterMonkey]

They made alsa so they would not be used as free bug testers and squashers like they did when the OSS sound system was in the kernel.

Oh the hypocrisy.

"Free bug testers and squashers" - that is exactly what the user community is for every OSS project, ever.

See what I did there?

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Blaskowicz]

And so if you want both generic audio and low latency audio you need TWO sound systems on top of a THIRD one and at least two of them (Pulseaudio, ALSA) are configured by editing empty or semi-empty config files on the command line.
All so that maybe (not sure if that configuration is easily possible or makes sense) an ALSA application sends sounds to Pulseaudio (which emulates ALSA), which outputs to Jack which pipes it to ALSA.

I'm not necessarily against all that stuff but distros should support configurations where everything works, with wizards or a GUI to help you. Last time I tried launching (not even using) something other than audacity or qsynth all I got was "Ardour 2 couldn't start because fuck you". (granted that was a few years ago on ubuntu 10.04 I believe)

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Truekaiser]

Yes until 4front tells the linux kernel devs to 'fsck off and thank you for developing our lead software product for unix, for free. oh and btw you're no longer allowed to use OSS anymore.'
Which is what they did with the previous OSS version that was in the kernel.

The only programs that I have encountered that don't work well with alsa without the need for a sound system on top of alsa are the ones with project leads that purposefully don't follow ALSA documentation.
Zsnes and Bsnes are perfect examples.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Truekaiser]

The difference is that the company behind OSS was using them so they did not have to pay a cent and then turn around and sell the result to customers of UNIX and BSD as a complete drop in sound system.
And at the same time try to get linux users to pay them for using it.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you seem to know something about this, I want to ask you a question that's been bothering me for a good ten years:

As I understand it, there are three kinds of audio with regards to latency:

1. Desktop noises, MP3s, and other stuff that doesn't have to be synchronized with anything.
2. Video playback, and pro-audio where your audio playback has to be synchronized with something else.
3. Games, MIDI synthesis, and other things where you don't even know what audio you need to play until you need to play it.

ALSA is designed to do #2 but kind of ignores #3. Jack is designed to do #3 but, implementing it via ALSA, it just isn't in a position to do it well, and never has except for a few people on the internet who claim it works perfectly. I've been trying to do it for ten years on numerous systems and it's always a struggle as it just barely works at a latency of 5 ms and with any more than that it's just painful to try to use it for MIDI synthesis.

Anyway, my question is, why don't they support the #3 type of audio by overwriting audio DMA buffers?

Basically, what you'd do is always keep a good 500 ms of audio (from #1 and #2 type sources) in the DMA buffer at all times, which would guarantee that these types of audio never suffer from buffer underruns. Then when a MIDI application decides it needs to suddenly play a note it didn't know about before (because it received it via a MIDI cable from external hardware and couldn't have known sooner) it calculates what that note will sound like over the next 100 ms or so (under the assumption that it won't receive a note-off event) and then tells the audio system "beginning 0.3 ms ago (when I received this event) I need you to mix this into the output audio stream" and the audio system then mixes that new note with what is already in the DMA buffer, then overwrites the DMA buffer with the corrected audio data. The sound card then begins picking up the new data with its next DMA read, and thus the total latency for that note-on event was the 0.3 ms the application took to synthesize the audio plus the 8 samples or so that the audio hardware itself buffers as it reads from DMA. Similarly, when the note-off event is received, the MIDI synthesizer synthesizes the note turning off, then tells the audio system to remove the old data that represented the note continuing to play and insert the new audio data of the note turning off. The result is that the latency for real-time events is always the absolute minimum that the system can support at that moment, and yet there's never any audio buffer underrun that affects the non-real-time audio.

I tried suggesting this to the people behind the Jack project about ten years ago, but unfortunately I couldn't convince them that writing to a DMA buffer that is in use doesn't cause the system to crash. ...and it's really quite sad, as I imagine this is the whole reason why audio is done via DMA buffers rather than via port I/O, as the DMA buffers allow the CPU to change the audio stream at a moment's notice while still using a large buffer to prevent underruns, yet we've been ignoring this functionality for a decade and instead suffering with trying to choose the smallest audio buffer possible such that we still end up with a larger-than-necessary latency and also get to deal with audio buffer underruns when system performance isn't ideal.

Anyway, is there some legitimate reason why this isn't done (like perhaps modern audio hardware dropped support for DMA and now works only via port I/O and offers no way to back up and re-write audio already written to the sound card's buffers) or is it simply a matter of audio being implemented as a simple character device by ALSA and not supporting negative seeks on that device, thus meaning that Jack simply can't do what's best because Jack isn't ALSA?

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[goruka]

Both Windows and OSX handle real-time audio in the way you mention, so you can have something like Jack and system sounds at the same time. OSS from 4front does this same thing.

The problem is that, for this to work, you have to open audio in real-time with the best possible combination of parameters, and this might involve resampling or dithering audio from lowest bit depth or sample rate. The kernel does not support using floating point code, so integer math needs to be used for the resampling.

Despite that most commercial hardware has for ages used fixed point math for this, and that even a simple spline interpolation would do fine for all cases since you are upsampling, most of the "audio gurus" of the linux audio development comunity of the time (like Paul Davis, Steve Harris, etc) convinced the kernel people that there would be a terrible quality loss and it was a bad idea to do this.

So, the situation of the linux kernel audio is one of those situations when instead of designing by use case, it was designed by designers that would prefer a "clean" solution instead of a practical one (that Commercial OSs and hardware implemented).

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

> Despite that most commercial hardware has for ages used fixed point math for this, and that even a simple spline interpolation would do fine for all cases since you are upsampling, most of the "audio gurus" of the linux audio development comunity of the time (like Paul Davis, Steve Harris, etc) convinced the kernel people that there would be a terrible quality loss and it was a bad idea to do this.

One of the problems of using varying sample formats and rates when producing low latency audio is you have now introduced format conversions and resampling inside the deadline constrained realtime audio producing routines.

In addition, if you're not using floating point you're ignoring the possibility for optimisations using SIMD/FMA instructions.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[goruka]

This is not really a problem because, even if you wanted to use the most expensive interpolation possible, you can resample your lower-priority audio outside and feed it through a lock-free ringbuffer. This way the deadline constrained realtime audio has no penalty in practice.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

> you can resample your lower-priority audio outside and feed it through a lock-free ringbuffer. This way the deadline constrained realtime audio has no penalty in practice.

So it seems we agree that running non audio graph canonical formats and rates within the real time processing callback is a silly idea, right?

Now - would you agree that nearly all pro-audio applications and plugins internally work in floating point?

If you are advocating for an in-kernel fixed point mixer for the hardware you will need to perform conversions to fixed point for any output. This seems an unnecessary burn of RT time given we can pass floating point to hardware and do any mixing of it in software with it all in floating point.

Also, I'll point it out again:

"if you're not using floating point you're ignoring the possibility for optimisations using SIMD/FMA instructions"

I'm having trouble understanding what it is you are proposing as a solution.

Are you asking for in kernel fixed point mixing? Out of kernel? Please let me know.

I've done a fair of audio programming too, and the positions of the Jack guys and Poettering are (mostly) understandable.

The bit I don't understand is why Pulseaudio wasn't a "relaxed" mode of Jack with the necessary hardware bits bolted on. Then again the Jack project can't agree to work on one codebase or list of functionality and Pulseaudio can't agree to actually do any low latency work (except they do low latency enough for gaming, sure).

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[goruka]

If you ask me, I think this should be handled in-kernel for may reasons:
1) You need a process running SCHED_FIFO all for sound otherwise. This is OK but you are still at the mercy of the scheduler when you poll.
2) Letting this happen in userspace resulted in several competing APIs and no standard over more than a decade. While for toolkits this is not serious, for audio this is, because the competing APIs require exclusive access to a resource.
3) Resampling, at the best quality and even in a real-time audio process is extremely cheap, and you only need to do it for a single stream.

Which is what my OP is about, what you suggest we've been there, done that and failed. This is simple functionality that should be handled in kernel with a simple API presented to userspace.

Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame.

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

> Which is what my OP is about, what you suggest we've been there, done that and failed. This is simple functionality that should be handled in kernel with a simple API presented to userspace.

I'd argue that in fact with OSS, we've been there and tried it and it (the Unix write() and ioctl way) fails. (Not to mention you have no idea what I'd advocate, I've just been trying to work out how you'd tackle some of the hard problems with realtime DSP, which you've avoiding answering).

I'll ask again - are you saying to put floating point mixing in the kernel, or fixed point mixing? There are performance and other reasons why floating point register store/restore is avoided in the kernel (in fact some drivers uses these registers as working space IIRC). If you're saying put fixed point mixing in the kernel - this either incurs a penalty in converting everything to that fixed point for mixing _within the realtime processing thread_ or you force every userspace application to output fixed point to the kernel sound API.

Low latency timing information and scheduling is a crap shoot with OSS. How do you know when the sound you are queueing with write() will actually get output? How do you schedule your user-space applications with enough priority that they aren't parked before they get to that critical write() call?

All modern audio APIs have moved away from ioctl and write() to a callback down stack from the interrupt for a reason.

Ignoring this is going _backwards_ from what Jack gives us today.

Bad UI

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I think the PA gui control programs are the biggest issue, Pavucontrol and the other tools are just utterly confusing and obtuse. Typical developer designed UI paradigm, make a widget for each configuration parameter instead of thinking through the use cases and constructing some abstractions that make sense to the user and not the developer. Once the configuration is properly presented and a task-oriented UI is constructed around that I don't think PA will give people so many issues. There are a lot of neat things you CAN do with it, IF you can figure out how. Its just that no mortal human (myself included) can make heads nor tails of the frikking thing.

Re:Bad UI

[Blaskowicz]

You can do neat things but they require writing hardly discoverable crap in a configuration file. E.g. I was delighted to be able to get an optional downmixing from stereo to mono, which I wanted for years (be it on Windows, ALSA, ALSA + pulseaudio, or as a hardware feature - the latter can be found on 1970s amps).
But you have to scrounge the web then write this in the adequate place in the file system : "load-module module-remap-sink master=alsa_output.pci-0000_04_04.0.analog-stereo sink_name=mono channels=2 channel_map=mono,mono"

If that were Windows software you would have a GUI with checkboxes and the like to remap sound channels. And that's what Media Player Classic gave me a decade ago. And if software was still made like in the old days you would have off-line help files.

To pulseaudio's credit the feature works well : a new radio button appears in the GUI and switching from one sink to another works instantly.

Re:Bad UI

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how to record a Skype call. I'm sure its perfectly straightforward for any of the PA developers. I just haven't even been able to wrap my head around their terminology and concepts.

Re:Bad UI

[Blaskowicz]

Simply launching Audacity and picking the right "input" allowed me to capture the same sound that pulseaudio sends to speakers.
Possibly a second Audacity instance can be used to record what enters the PC through microphone. Then investigate using two simultaneous tracks in Audacity. Would that be working and good enough?

Re:Bad UI

[CronoCloud]

Skype-call-recorder:

http://atdot.ch/scr/download/

Re:Bad UI

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Maybe. I think its actually pretty easy to do in one or another of the PA-supplied UIs, but I have yet to find clear instructions and mostly I just dread the "Oh, gosh, you touched a config file, that was a bad idea, how about not ever having sound again?" lol.

Short answer: use apulse

[Anonymous Coward]

To those commenters saying "don't use Skype": Skype is a proprietary protocol that can only interact with other Skype users, and Skype is very popular and so hard to avoid. I was once offered a remote interview on Skype, only to fail because I have no Windows and Skype for Linux was a piece of crap multiple major versions behind (yeah, with a week more to play I might have gotten it to half-way work with Wine, but who cares?).

To those saying "kill pulse": that's not an option when software depends on pulse (rather than, say, offering it as an option, which still may require that it be present for the dynamic libraries). https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse seems to eliminate pulse audio and still allow apps linking to it to work. I've not tested it with Skype, nor have I checked if there is a Debian package for it that can be used as a drop-in substitute (I use Gentoo, and that's where I found it).

Re:Short answer: use apulse

[Anonymous Coward]

apulse serves skype perfectly

./ is starting to suck.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is *not* news for nerds, or stuff that matters. Take this question to a tech forum. Get it off the damn news site.

Timothy, what has gotten into you? You're making this site suck more and more every day.

Please stop.

Re:Bring Back the Soundblaster

[ray-auch]

Yeah, but the fact that you have to mess with and configure each component individually and manage all the dependencies yourself means you know what is going on rather than have some magic uber-daemon figure out what it thinks you want and then do something, but you have no idea what it actually did when it goes wrong.

[or is that systemd, i forget...]

Slashdot is not Tech Support.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is this TechSupportDot?

Have some hot grits down your pants.

Pulseaudio not smart enough for me

[Blaskowicz]

I dislike that pulseaudio doesn't set its volume at what was the last value, when I boot and autologin to my desktop. The sound control applet (or is it a tray icon) does remember, but it registers after twiddling it up or down.
As I use an amplifier at 100% volume and Alsamixer is set at -2dB that result in very loud sound coming from the music player or video player etc. if I forget about it. Fortunately the amp is low powered and 2x12 watts so I guess the sound comes out at around 100 decibels only. Would be fun to try a dB meter to know exactly

Re:Bring Back the Soundblaster

[ArcadeMan]

You're right, at least we knew what was going on. It also meant that computer users were at least semi-knowledgeable about how computers work.

Today, they don't even know the difference between RAM and storage. And in ten years, I guess they won't even know the difference between local storage and online storage.

This is solveable

[Anonymous Coward]

Users want skype - but not the pulseaudiuo that skype now requires. The long term solution is to get skype developers to drop the unnecessary pulseaudio.

The solution that works today:
1. Set up jack & ALSA to create a virtual soundcard that is sw-mixed into your real soundcard. Not "easy", but doable. Talk to jack experts on various linux audio forums - they sometimes do this sort of stuff for other reasons.
2. Set up pulseaudio to (mis)manage the virtual soundcard - not the real one. Not that hard, pulseaudio is not confused by a machine that has several soundcards. The fact that the other is "fake" is of no consequence.

After this, skype sound will be routed through pulseaudio and into alsa - and from there to jack and the real soundcard. If pulseaudio messes up anything, only skype will be affected. The rest of your system will run without pulseaudio interference.

Have you tried this?

[t4eXanadu]

A few posts down, there is a suggested fix. It seems this is a known bug.

libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=59217

Pulseaudio killed the year of Linux on the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a tepid Ubuntu user between Edgy and Hoary. Eventually I got bored with spending days fixing PulseAudio settings after every 6 month upgrade and went back to Windows. A couple of years ago I hopped back on the Linux bus (via Mint Maya Mate).

Touch wood, PulseAudio is now as invisible as it always should have been. It still imposes restrictions on things it shouldn't touch (want your home directory on an NTFS partition? Tough), but it no longer falls flat on its face over the most basic part of its duties (just play the f**king sound damnit).
I hope systemd matures more quickly.

P.S. Not pointing fingers, but Palimpsest also sucked last time I was obliged to use it.

x220 Wifi?

[Luthair]

Entirely unrelated - are you using the 8188ce wifi card in this? Or did you switch to the Intel card? I find wifi on my x220 will continually die and need to toggle the radio switch to restart it.

Same here

[dargaud]

And if you throw buetooth speakers into the mix it turns into a complete nightmare that only a reboot can fix. Sometimes.

Uninstall Skype and Pulseuadio.

[Narcocide]

Use mumble for voice chat. Its free and its not spyware.

Yeah, OSS was nice

[Viol8]

Its only major fault was that it was one-process-at-a-time but that would have - IMO - been pretty easy to fix. But instead they came up with the non portable (to other versions of unix) dogs dinner called ALSA. Christ, trying to program with that API is like trying to cycle with your legs tied around your head. It works - just - but it could have been made a LOT simpler.

Personally I think X windows should manage sounds as well as video allowing networked sound apps and there should be just a single sound API across all versions of unix.

Re:Yeah, OSS was nice

[jones_supa]

OSS is not one-process-at-a time.

Re:Yeah, OSS was nice

[goruka]

4Front OSS, which was later opensourced, could mix both low latency and high latency streams, and the API was *much* simpler and unix-like.

padevchooser

[Anonymous Coward]

You are looking for padevchooser I guess

This is a bug that was fixed ages ago

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a bug which was fixed back in January: http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2014-January/071156.html

This has absolutely nothing to do with pulseaudio by the way, since the volumes are set by alsa and udev. It is still Lennart's fault though, because he wrote the udev support patch for alsa, and then didn't update it when udev rule syntax was changed.

Alternatives

[Foresto]

I ran into that same problem with Skype's latest release. Rather than giving Pulse a fourth chance to burn me, I decided it might be time to give WebRTC a try.

I'm so glad I did. OS-independent browser-to-browser video chat worked fine. I used Chromium on linux while my friend used Chrome on OSX. The latest Firefox release supposedly supports h.264, so it might work as well. Here are a couple of call set-up sites in case you'd like to try it for yourself:

https://opentokrtc.com/

https://vline.com/

Good point...

[See Attached]

Very interesting that you note sound devices being a userspace issue, when it really has to do with hardware, device, kernel drivers etc. Sure.. USB brings this devices to userland as well, but if its handled properly in kernel land, hooks could provide some control into Userland. I used to compile (2.4) kernels and work in bttv, tda, emu10k and so for TV and sound cards and it just worked (a lot of it, but it was predictable!). Then I stopped compiling my own kernels and tried to do it in /etc/modprobe.conf, but that got crazy between kernel updates and Pulse and Alsa and OSS getting all blurry. So much for history. Where are we now, years later? Does a lInux desktop user have to dabble in /etc/modprobe.conf ? Doesnt make much sense to me. From working with Udev under RH6 at work, udev is working predictably with ethernet devices, seems a valid model. How about we start with a soundconfig utility that captures a systems setup at that moment, and spits out a consistent lattice work of device configurations. Users dont care about /dev/dsp01, or incomplete mixer apps, we just want sound to work.

Re:Just reading this gives me the creeps ...

[F.Ultra]

Since exactly when is Skype FOSS?

Re: Are any of them able to use the Skype network?

[Technician]

Yes, but not in a very graceful fashion. The one I use on occasoion is ippi.com as a SIP provider. You can Google the proceedure to use the Skype/SIP gateway.

In a nutshell, the gateway is like dialing 9 on a PBX and outside callers needing to use an automated attendant to reach an extension, so you need to educate your Skype contacts on how to use it.

The cumbersome interface uses a Skype proxy for outgoing calls where the caller is ippi.com as the caller, and to call in from Skype, you add the poxy as a contact, then when connecting to the proxy, the caller is sent a text that needs to be replyed to with the "SIP extension" you are calling, so it does not support Skype directly. The caller needs two pieces of information to contact you, the Skype to ippi friend, then your sip user ID. For example if I used my slashdot handle, which I don't, my SIP address would be sip:technician@ippi.fr. The Skype caller would need to call the gateway Skype2ippi and then respond to the automated text and enter technician to ring my SIP phone.

Outgoing calls are simpler. I enter the full gateway/skype string into the speed dial settings on IPPI, so to call one of my friends, I just pick up the phone and speed dial them. IPPI speed dialer uses 2 digit speed dialing so you can save 99 contacts.

This works great with either a SIP softphone, or a hardware device such as an ATA and analog phone or an IP phone such as one of the Grandstream models.

The service does not provide video, only an audio connection.

Re:Stop PulseAudio...

[Crimey McBiggles]

There is and always was ALSA

You mean OSS?

If only politics hadn't fragmented the Linux sound ecosystem, we probably wouldn't have to deal with such a clusterfsck. Then again, there's always BSD...

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

[tlambert]

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

It'll never touch your settings again!

Also, it's incredibly poorly designed, and they won't take patches that fix things.

Already fixed

[Tester]

This is a known bug that has already been fixed. You should complain to whoever maintains the Debian package to include the patch.

PulseAudio Is Crap

[linuxrocks123]

PulseAudio is a piece of crap. Uninstall it, uninstall Skype, and use something else like Ekiga. Don't let a minor pissant program like Skype pull in the SystemD of audio.

not necessarily pulseaudio

[superwiz]

This sounds like an interrupt conflict. If the USB device and audio device share the interrupt and (because of hardware misconfiguratin) pluging in/out of usb causes sound device's interrupt handler to run, it could be reading garbage data and using it as the new config settings.

pulseaudio changing settings

[jhhaynes]

I wonder if your laptop is one of those that makes the sound system disappear when there is nothing plugged into the jacks. Seems like that would make it hard for pulseaudio to keep its senses.

Get out of the box.

[soundguy4film]

put an adaptor in your audio jack that will stop the computer from knowing there are headphones being plugged in and out. Problem solved.

Re: Are any of them able to use the Skype network?

[dotancohen]

Thank you for demonstrating why using something other than Skype itself is not a feasible solution for the average user.

Re:configuration profile

[udippel]

Though you're an AC, I reply because this is about the closest what I can find in this discussion and what I also experience. In my case on kubuntu. So far everyone has shifted the responsibility to everyone else. Slowly I am getting sick of FOSS, though I have used it happily for close to 20 years.
Alas, also me getting old, and the youngsters don't always follow the philosophy of the old days. So we have to endure the modern types as well, the Lennart Ps, Christoph Fs, Vishesh Hs, etc., for whom the FOSS-thing is closer to an ego trip than a community effort.
Though back to the topic: I run kubuntu almost exclusively on a number of boxes, 32-bit, 64-bit, always updated. And for the last years, none has ever been willing to store my audio settings; except of the volume.
One DELL-box has seen me setting the output to 'headphone' some 50 times, after each reboot. Another self-assembled box (MSI) with internal audio and extra sound card comes back on the internal sound card after each reboot, and graciously accepts me setting it to the extra sound card; only to revert to the built-in device after the next reboot. And, yes, I have saved the settings close to one hundred times by now. Then I stopped, giving up, and start by setting the audio system to use the add-on sound card.
In the old days the distros could know much better what angle they were responsible for; and what was upstream. With the more recent smudge-over of functionality (against the UNIX philosophy of small, modular, distributed) it is also more difficult for them to locate the trouble. And so more recent bug reports on kubuntu are returned with 'report to KDE', and from there 'report to [application]'.

Sad, just sad, very sad.

Re:configuration profile

[vyvepe]

Set up pulse audio the way you like it using pavucontrol.

Use "pacmd dump" to find the proper commands to do what you want.

Use pacmd with the selected comands at startup or add the selected commands to /etc/pulse/default.pa.

Or you can just put the full configuration you dumped to your ~/.config/pulse/default.pa:

pacmd dump > ~/.config/pulse/default.pa

There is a good chance this helps you.

too many negatives negating non-positive statement

[McFly777]

The only programs that I have encountered that don't work well with alsa without the need for a sound system on top of alsa are the ones with project leads that purposefully don't follow ALSA documentation.

I apologize for my lack of comprehension, and I am not trying to be a grammar Nazi, but I have a great deal of difficulty underdstanding this statement. I really did try; even to the point of doing tree graphs and venn diagrams of the sentence.

What I get is: Projects with leads who don't follow ALSA documentation are projects which don't need additional sound systems, and yet still don't work well with ALSA. (therefore maybe they DO need an additional sound system?)

or

The programs which don't work well with ALSA are the ones which don't have a sound systems on top, because the leads aren't following documentation.

Either way, I get that one needs to follow documentation and put a sound system on top. Is that what you intended?

or did you want to say that if you follow ALSA documentation, extra layers will not be required? (From context I expect the latter, but I can't get my brain to graph it that way.)