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Firefox Goes PulseAudio Only, Leaves ALSA Users With No Sound (omgubuntu.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're a Linux user who upgraded to Firefox 52 only to find that the browser no longer plays sound, you're not alone. Firefox 52 saw release last week and it makes PulseAudio a hard dependency -- meaning ALSA only desktops are no longer supported. Ubuntu uses PulseAudio by default (as most modern Linux distributions do) so the switch won't affect most -- but some Linux users and distros do prefer, for various reasons, to use ALSA, which is part of the Linux kernel. Lubuntu 16.04 LTS is one of the distros that use ALSA by default. Lubuntu users who upgraded to Firefox 52 through the regular update channel were, without warning, left with a web browser that plays no sound. Lubuntu 16.10 users are not affected as the distro switched to PulseAudio.
--enable-alsa will go away in Firefox 54. And the build system of Firefox is insane, so you can't expect a regular user to recompile.
With PulseAudio being criminally broken (case in point: doesn't work on the box I sit my butt at right at the moment), the effect is that Firefox has no sound.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
ALSA has supported software mixing for over a decade.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Bottom line, I guess: PulseAudio in 2017 _just effin' works_.
Just effin' works? You gotta' be effin' kiddin' me.
Pulse is _barely acceptable_ if you ONLY deal with stereo.
If you're using 5.1, or better yet, 7.1, you are sooooo fucked.
1. Pulseaudio has "enable_remixing" enabled by default.
This effectively ruins stereo content when played back on surround hardware. It sends L to L, SL, BL, and C. It sends R to R, SR, BR, and C. Do you see the problem here? C=L+R.
Bonus, it will also synthesize a LFE channel for you. LFE=L+R lowpassed at 200hz.
This can be disabled in the config file. I've never seen any pulseaudio manager with an option for it.
2. ZERO of the about 40 linux games which support surround in my steam library actually work properly in 7.1. (This might be steam runtime's fault). It invents channels that don't exist in a 7.1 configuration. Instead of SL and SR, there is a Front-Left-of-Center and, Front-Right-of-Center.
If remixing is disabled, you will have no output on SL and SR. If remixing is enabled, you will have incorrect output on SL and SR (A mix of the front and rear channels).
3. If you're trying to set up 5.1 over optical SPDIF, may god have mercy on your soul. Good luck getting it to output 5.1 DTS. I was only ever able to get stereo, but I hear it's doable.