Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Samstag 22 Mai 2010, Barry Jibb wrote: On 22/05/10 21:26, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Nikos Chantziarasrea...@arcor.de wrote: [snip] I don't do professional audio. I have a normal PC. And just like I sometimes use a synth in Windows (I'm just a hobbyist), I'd like to do the same in Linux. You can; but you have to use special software, because yours is a special case. The normal desktop/laptop user does not use a synth. ALSA/Pulse needing third-party stuff just to get basics right (acceptable latency; not *ultra* low latency, just acceptable one) is a sign that they're not designed right. Your definition of acceptable is *ultra* low to me, and many others. To me acceptable latency means that the audio system does not waste my laptop/phone battery. And in the end, you know what? Even if OSS4 had a broken design, it's still better, because it works better. This is your principal problem: you think your use-case is universal, and it's not. To me Alsa+PulseAudio works better because it allows the battery of my laptop to last for hours while I see a movie with my bluetooth headset. With the latencies you want, that's not possible. I believe my use-case is more general. At least it gets the basics right. Other operating systems are much more advanced in that manner. It's ALSA that holds Linux audio back. Jack uses ALSA. From the Jack FAQ page (http://jackaudio.org/faq): quote Doesn't use JACK add latency? There is NO extra latency caused by using JACK for audio input and output. When we say none, we mean absolutely zero. The only impact of using JACK is a slight increase in the amount of work done by the CPU to process a given chunk of audio, which means that in theory you could not get 100% of the processing power that you might get it if your application(s) used ALSA or CoreAudio directly. However, given that the difference is less than 1%, and that your system will be unstable before you get close to 80% of the theoretical processing power, the effect is completely disregardable. /quote ALSA works great. And for regular users, with PulseAudio both are full of awesome awesomeness. For your use-case, you should try Jack. Regards. Can someone unsubscribe me please?!?!?!?!?!? READ THE FUCKING HELP IN THE EMAIL HEADER: List-Post: mailto:gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org List-Help: mailto:gentoo-user+h...@lists.gentoo.org List-Unsubscribe: mailto:gentoo-user+unsubscr...@lists.gentoo.org List-Subscribe: mailto:gentoo-user+subscr...@lists.gentoo.org List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail gentoo-user.gentoo.org X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org UNSUBSCRIBE YOURSELF
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: [...] because you're not using software that needs good latency, like software synthesizers) but I do. Then you're doing it wrong. If you are doing professional audio (a little fact, that, by the way, you *NEVER* mentioned; you talked about boot times and FPS in games, but not about professional audio), using PulseAudio it's not going to work for you. Lennart himself said so. But even in the case of professional audio, OSS4 is not the answer. Because the mixing it belongs in user space, not the kernel. The answer you should look at, is Jack: http://jackaudio.org/ And Jack runs in user space, obviously, and on top of ALSA. And it has *incredible* low latencies; you should try it Lennart wrote a comparison between Jack and PulseAudio: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/when-pa-and-when-not.html Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 1:21 AM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: Latency is the delay between giving the order to play a sound and the sound actually being played. It's usually around 30ms here with ALSA/dmix, and around 10ms with OSS/vmix. It's not funny trying to play something in a software synth with a keyboard when having a 30ms latency. As I said, you're doing it wrong. No normal (average desktop, media center, laptop, linux-phone) user needs 10ms of latency in audio. That's overkill. Yours is a special case, and you need special software. Try Jack. And it doesn't need to be in kernel space, by the way. OSS4 is dying because of that. For the rest of us mere mortals, PulseAudio Rocks; it has *variable* latencies by design, so the audio processing doesn't eat up all the battery life. Again, read the comparison between PulseAudio and Jack: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/when-pa-and-when-not.html Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Samstag 22 Mai 2010, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: [...] because you're not using software that needs good latency, like software synthesizers) but I do. Then you're doing it wrong. If you are doing professional audio (a little fact, that, by the way, you *NEVER* mentioned; you talked about boot times and FPS in games, but not about professional audio), using PulseAudio it's not going to work for you. Lennart himself said so. But even in the case of professional audio, OSS4 is not the answer. Because the mixing it belongs in user space, not the kernel. The answer you should look at, is Jack: http://jackaudio.org/ And Jack runs in user space, obviously, and on top of ALSA. And it has *incredible* low latencies; you should try it Lennart wrote a comparison between Jack and PulseAudio: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/when-pa-and-when-not.html Regards. your posts are in vain. He wants to troll and just show how 'superior' OSSv4 is. To do that he uses the crappiest solutions, whines a lot and ignores facts.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Samstag 22 Mai 2010, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: On 05/22/2010 07:59 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 1:21 AM, Nikos Chantziarasrea...@arcor.de wrote: Latency is the delay between giving the order to play a sound and the sound actually being played. It's usually around 30ms here with ALSA/dmix, and around 10ms with OSS/vmix. It's not funny trying to play something in a software synth with a keyboard when having a 30ms latency. As I said, you're doing it wrong. No normal (average desktop, media center, laptop, linux-phone) user needs 10ms of latency in audio. That's overkill. Yours is a special case, and you need special software. Try Jack. I don't do professional audio. I have a normal PC. And just like I sometimes use a synth in Windows (I'm just a hobbyist), I'd like to do the same in Linux. Windows: I don't need Jack there. Audio latency is low even with non-ASIO drivers. Linux: I suddenly need Jack and specialty hacks and must do without a mixer! No thanks. OSSv4 allows me to use my machine in the same manner as Windows: It just works and does the right thing regardless of the application I'm running. ALSA/Pulse needing third-party stuff just to get basics right (acceptable latency; not *ultra* low latency, just acceptable one) is a sign that they're not designed right. And OSS4 dying because of kernel-mixing is a bit far-stretched. No FP mixing in kernel is Linux-specific. Other kernels don't have a problem with that. And in the end, you know what? Even if OSS4 had a broken design, it's still better, because it works better. At least it gets the basics right. Other operating systems are much more advanced in that manner. It's ALSA that holds Linux audio back. in case that it works at all. OSSv4 fucked up very hard here. And for some magical reasons, I have no problem at all with latencies. But sometimes you complain about latencies, and when people showing up, that lats are not a problem, you switch over to 'volume' and 'mixing'. Just to ignore the facts presented there. Go troll somewhere else. Maybe the OSS fanboy mailing list.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: [snip] I don't do professional audio. I have a normal PC. And just like I sometimes use a synth in Windows (I'm just a hobbyist), I'd like to do the same in Linux. You can; but you have to use special software, because yours is a special case. The normal desktop/laptop user does not use a synth. ALSA/Pulse needing third-party stuff just to get basics right (acceptable latency; not *ultra* low latency, just acceptable one) is a sign that they're not designed right. Your definition of acceptable is *ultra* low to me, and many others. To me acceptable latency means that the audio system does not waste my laptop/phone battery. And in the end, you know what? Even if OSS4 had a broken design, it's still better, because it works better. This is your principal problem: you think your use-case is universal, and it's not. To me Alsa+PulseAudio works better because it allows the battery of my laptop to last for hours while I see a movie with my bluetooth headset. With the latencies you want, that's not possible. I believe my use-case is more general. At least it gets the basics right. Other operating systems are much more advanced in that manner. It's ALSA that holds Linux audio back. Jack uses ALSA. From the Jack FAQ page (http://jackaudio.org/faq): quote Doesn't use JACK add latency? There is NO extra latency caused by using JACK for audio input and output. When we say none, we mean absolutely zero. The only impact of using JACK is a slight increase in the amount of work done by the CPU to process a given chunk of audio, which means that in theory you could not get 100% of the processing power that you might get it if your application(s) used ALSA or CoreAudio directly. However, given that the difference is less than 1%, and that your system will be unstable before you get close to 80% of the theoretical processing power, the effect is completely disregardable. /quote ALSA works great. And for regular users, with PulseAudio both are full of awesome awesomeness. For your use-case, you should try Jack. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On 22/05/10 21:26, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Nikos Chantziarasrea...@arcor.de wrote: [snip] I don't do professional audio. I have a normal PC. And just like I sometimes use a synth in Windows (I'm just a hobbyist), I'd like to do the same in Linux. You can; but you have to use special software, because yours is a special case. The normal desktop/laptop user does not use a synth. ALSA/Pulse needing third-party stuff just to get basics right (acceptable latency; not *ultra* low latency, just acceptable one) is a sign that they're not designed right. Your definition of acceptable is *ultra* low to me, and many others. To me acceptable latency means that the audio system does not waste my laptop/phone battery. And in the end, you know what? Even if OSS4 had a broken design, it's still better, because it works better. This is your principal problem: you think your use-case is universal, and it's not. To me Alsa+PulseAudio works better because it allows the battery of my laptop to last for hours while I see a movie with my bluetooth headset. With the latencies you want, that's not possible. I believe my use-case is more general. At least it gets the basics right. Other operating systems are much more advanced in that manner. It's ALSA that holds Linux audio back. Jack uses ALSA. From the Jack FAQ page (http://jackaudio.org/faq): quote Doesn't use JACK add latency? There is NO extra latency caused by using JACK for audio input and output. When we say none, we mean absolutely zero. The only impact of using JACK is a slight increase in the amount of work done by the CPU to process a given chunk of audio, which means that in theory you could not get 100% of the processing power that you might get it if your application(s) used ALSA or CoreAudio directly. However, given that the difference is less than 1%, and that your system will be unstable before you get close to 80% of the theoretical processing power, the effect is completely disregardable. /quote ALSA works great. And for regular users, with PulseAudio both are full of awesome awesomeness. For your use-case, you should try Jack. Regards. Can someone unsubscribe me please?!?!?!?!?!?
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 8:08 PM, Jonathan winelauncher.jonat...@googlemail.com wrote: [snip] Windows works for many people it does not make it the best OS or the only one. In Ubuntu they went from oss to PulseAudio. I bet that 90% of Ubuntu users do not know that PulseAudio uses Alsa. What it has to do with anthing? I'm not saying it kinda works; I'm saying it works great. Much better than anything else I have tried. At the end of the day I want to pick a sound system and use it. I do not want one forced on me. This is OpenSource; nobody is forcing you to anything. If you want to you can take the code of ALSA, OSS4 or even PulseAudio and do whatever you want with it. But every major distribution and all the Linux based phones are going with PulseAudio. And for a good reason: it works great. So it's not being forced on anyone, but its going to be the default almost everywhere. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: Then why does dmix lag? Then why does dmix lag? I don't know; I don't care. I don't use dmix, I use PulseAudio, and it takes care of everything in user space and I don't have to worry about anything. I've tried it 6 days ago. Ubuntu 10.04. It's still a laggy, buggy, pile of . First thing I did was to disable it. It doesn't lag here. It's rock solid stable. In all my computers, each one with completely different sound hardware. And I'm just using the ebuilds from Gentoo; I didn't configure *anything*. I didn't have to. Maybe Ubuntu has something wrong: Lennart complained that they didn't get it: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pa-in-ubuntu.html Yes, you and many people also find it acceptable to run their games with 10FPS, or to take their systems 1 minute to boot, etc. My games doesn't run at 10FPS, my laptop boot in seconds (and usually it's always suspended), my desktop and media center (specially the latter) boot very quickly also. Please don't speak about something you don't know anything about. I am not one of those people. I don't like it when the sound lags. You may claim that it doesn't bother you. But you can't claim that it doesn't happen. I can claim it: it doesn't happen *to me*. It works beautifully. I'm using Gentoo, with the following versions: media-sound/pulseaudio-0.9.21.1 sys-kernel/vanilla-sources-2.6.32.9 My sound card is : 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) (I'm on my laptop; don't have the specs of my desktop or media center, but the versions at least should be the same). I simply don't have any sound lags. That doesn't mean ALSA is better. Again, I trust more the technical judgement from the kernel developers. No offense. Then why don't they fix it? It's still crap after all this time. It's not in my case. Not at all. But (as I said in my last mail), this is Open Source; if you think it's crap, you can try to fix it. All I'm saying is that PulseAudio is a great sound architecture for Linux. It works great for me, in several hardware configurations; and in particular in my Media Center, which is my principal medium to listen to music. And I trust the judgement of the ones that decided to use ALSA+PulseAudio. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Freitag 21 Mai 2010, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: On 05/21/2010 09:26 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Nikos Chantziarasrea...@arcor.de wrote: Then why does dmix lag? Then why does dmix lag? I don't know; I don't care. I don't use dmix, I use PulseAudio, and it takes care of everything in user space and I don't have to worry about anything. I've tried it 6 days ago. Ubuntu 10.04. It's still a laggy, buggy, pile of . First thing I did was to disable it. It doesn't lag here. It's rock solid stable. In all my computers, each one with completely different sound hardware. And I'm just using the ebuilds from Gentoo; I didn't configure *anything*. I didn't have to. Maybe Ubuntu has something wrong: Lennart complained that they didn't get it: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pa-in-ubuntu.html Yes, you and many people also find it acceptable to run their games with 10FPS, or to take their systems 1 minute to boot, etc. My games doesn't run at 10FPS, my laptop boot in seconds (and usually it's always suspended), my desktop and media center (specially the latter) boot very quickly also. Please don't speak about something you don't know anything about. I am not one of those people. I don't like it when the sound lags. You may claim that it doesn't bother you. But you can't claim that it doesn't happen. I can claim it: it doesn't happen *to me*. It works beautifully. I'm using Gentoo, with the following versions: media-sound/pulseaudio-0.9.21.1 sys-kernel/vanilla-sources-2.6.32.9 My sound card is : 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) (I'm on my laptop; don't have the specs of my desktop or media center, but the versions at least should be the same). I simply don't have any sound lags. That doesn't mean ALSA is better. Again, I trust more the technical judgement from the kernel developers. No offense. Then why don't they fix it? It's still crap after all this time. It's not in my case. Not at all. But (as I said in my last mail), this is Open Source; if you think it's crap, you can try to fix it. All I'm saying is that PulseAudio is a great sound architecture for Linux. It works great for me, in several hardware configurations; and in particular in my Media Center, which is my principal medium to listen to music. And I trust the judgement of the ones that decided to use ALSA+PulseAudio. Regards. All of this boils down to what you should have said in the beginning: It works for *you*. You don't mind the lag (there is lag, no way around it, you just don't mind because you're not using software that needs good latency, like software synthesizers) but I do. So stop trying to convince me that it works for me too. To use your own words, please don't speak about something you don't know anything about. As I see it, if I have to use ALSA's OSS-compatibility to get acceptable results, why not use the real thing instead? h,mm, lets see - because oss4 is broken by design? Also, what 'latency' are you talking about?
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Wednesday 19 May 2010 23:56:39 walt wrote: On 05/19/2010 12:59 PM, Fabian Köster wrote: Hi *, I am currently trying to use Phonon and PulseAudio and have the following problem: When I play some Video with a Non-KDE application like VLC everything is perfectly directed to the local PulseAudio running on my machine and i have the expected sound-output. But when I use a KDE-Application like Kaffeine or Amarok there is no sound output although the stream is listed by pavucontrol... Well, since I'm first to answer I get to inject my prejudices first :) I think pulse is a very long answer to a very short question and so I did away with it months ago. And I haven't regretted it. Truly, I think very few people need pulse outside of professionals who work in film or music. The main reason others have disagreed with my opinion is because your silly desktop sounds like beeps and boings and toilets flushing interrupt the CD you're listening to. Uh, well, yeah, one sound generally interrupts another, true. So what? I'll bet your audio would do what you expect it to do if you just removed every trace of pulse from your machine and run revdep-rebuild with the pulse, arts, and esd useflags disabled (if those flags still exist). Contrary opinions will follow shortly ;) No, I don't think they will :-) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
I think pulse is a very long answer to a very short question and so I did away with it months ago. And I haven't regretted it. Truly, I think very few people need pulse outside of professionals who work in film or music. The main reason others have disagreed with my opinion is because your silly desktop sounds like beeps and boings and toilets flushing interrupt the CD you're listening to. Uh, well, yeah, one sound generally interrupts another, true. So what? I'll bet your audio would do what you expect it to do if you just removed every trace of pulse from your machine and run revdep-rebuild with the pulse, arts, and esd useflags disabled (if those flags still exist). Contrary opinions will follow shortly ;) ok.. the reason why I use PulseAudio at all is because I need sound forwarding over network. I have an IGEPv2 board which is connected using USB-sound to my amplifier. This works fine by the way, but not using KDE applications.. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thursday 20 May 2010 10:40:33 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: On 05/20/2010 11:15 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 19 May 2010 23:56:39 walt wrote: [snip] Well, since I'm first to answer I get to inject my prejudices first :) I think pulse is a very long answer to a very short question and so I did away with it months ago. And I haven't regretted it. Truly, I think very few people need pulse outside of professionals who work in film or music. The main reason others have disagreed with my opinion is because your silly desktop sounds like beeps and boings and toilets flushing interrupt the CD you're listening to. Uh, well, yeah, one sound generally interrupts another, true. So what? I'll bet your audio would do what you expect it to do if you just removed every trace of pulse from your machine and run revdep-rebuild with the pulse, arts, and esd useflags disabled (if those flags still exist). Contrary opinions will follow shortly ;) No, I don't think they will :-) Well, here is one :P Uh, well, yeah, one sound generally interrupts another, true. That is not true. ALSA (most people use that one) has dmix, which mixes all sounds from all applications together. You don't need PulseAudio for that. PulseAudio does indeed have it's uses. Some folks really do want fine-grained control over each daemon using the sound system, but those folks are not the set of average users. Feature-wise, ALSA pretty much does everything the *average* user wants, and that user does not really want to schlepp sound over the network or tweak every individual thing making noises. Now ALSA may or may not have good-quality code in it but that's another matter. We are discussing features. Like an earlier poster suggested, PulseAudio looks like a hammer in search of a nail. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 6:13 AM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Like an earlier poster suggested, PulseAudio looks like a hammer in search of a nail. I have a bluetooth headset. I set it up with gnome-bluetooth, and with PulseAudio I can dynamically redirect the output in my laptop from the speakers to the headset and back; it also redirects it automatically when my headset gets disconnected or runs out of battery. Good luck doing that with ALSA. PulseAudio is here to stay, and for a very good reason I say. It's not too complicated or overkill; a modern sound architecture for desktop computers was in dire need for Linux, and PulseAudio was the first complete and (more important) correct designed solution. Don't even mention OSS4; the sound architecture goes in user space, not the kernel. This is why *ALL* the Linux based mobile phones use PulseAudio: it *works*, and it *makes sense* from a technical point of view. It sucked for a long time? Indeed it did; just like KDE 4.0 sucked immediately afer KDE 3.5; just like X.org sucked at the very beginning; just like ALSA sucked when it replaced OSS; just like GNOME 2.0 sucked. Innovation is expensive. I have PulseAudio running perfectly in my laptop, my desktop, *and* my MediaCenter connected to my 5.1 system. Via HDMI, by the way. I thank for PulseAudio; now, after the initial (and very annoying) problems, it works, it doesn't get in the way, and it's flexible enough to adapt to new hardware and new sound solutions. Bluetooth headsets it's just one example (but a very good one I believe; everything is going wireless); there are USB sound cards, transparently output the music from my laptop to my MediaCenter, and, of course, little beeps from the GUI when I click a menu item. I repeat: PulseAudio is here to stay. You can purge it out of your system, but more and more applications will make use of it, and eventually you will not be able to have a desktop without it. Right now it works flawlessly in the majority of hardware; I highly recommend to start using it now (it's stable in Gentoo since a couple of months ago, I believe); and better get used to it. Because it's not going anywhere. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: On 05/20/2010 08:30 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: Don't even mention OSS4; the sound architecture goes in user space, not the kernel. I don't care where they go (why the hell should I?), for as long as they work. You should care, because if it breaks inside the kernel, it probably takes away the whole operating system. And then you lose work and you're sad. But don't take my word for it; Intel+Nokia are using PulseAudio in MeeGo, and Google it's doing the same with Android. They are making an opinion with their wallets. (And doesn't really matters, but I haven't heard that it's possible to switch audio from internal speakers to bluetooth headset with OSS4, so as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't work.) Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés can...@gmail.com wrote: [snip (And doesn't really matters, but I haven't heard that it's possible to switch audio from internal speakers to bluetooth headset with OSS4, so as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't work.) With just a few clicks, I should add. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: [snip] What doesn't work is PulseAudio, actually. Too many problems with it. Pulse is simply broken by design; it's too far from the kernel to be any good. If I may use (most of) your words: Well, it works here. It's been rock-solid through months. And with various use-cases, if I may add. Can you elaborate why the audio architecture has to be close to the kernel? The part that talks to the hardware obviously has to, but why the part that handles the features, the mixes, the virtual devices? I'm under the impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that it was one of the major reasons to leave OSS4 outside the upstream kernel; too many stuff in there that belongs in user space. It sounds reasonable to me. Specially when PulseAudio just works, for me and many more. [snip] ALSA can't switch to Bluetooth either. You could use PulseAudio with OSS4 instead of with ALSA though, but this is not officially supported. Indeed it's not supported, because it's (using your words again) broken by design by trying to do too many things inside the kernel that belong in user space. That's my understanding at least; please correct me if you believe I'm mistaken. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thursday 20 May 2010 21:25:36 Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: What doesn't work is PulseAudio, actually. Too many problems with it. Pulse is simply broken by design; it's too far from the kernel to be any good. If I may use (most of) your words: Well, it works here. It's been rock-solid through months. And with various use-cases, if I may add. Can you elaborate why the audio architecture has to be close to the kernel? The part that talks to the hardware obviously has to, but why the part that handles the features, the mixes, the virtual devices? I'm under the impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that it was one of the major reasons to leave OSS4 outside the upstream kernel; too many stuff in there that belongs in user space. It sounds reasonable to me. Well the general rule of good design is that a daemon the user will use to tell to do $STUFF is a daemon and runs in user space. Like wicd - you tell it to please stop using the wireless interface now that you have plugged in an ethernet cable, and all this happens in userspace. The daemon tells the kernel which drivers to activate and with what parameters (grossly simplified description). The kernel is a big fat box with drivers in it, and it also knows how to do neat things like scheduling. From that point of view, that aspect of PulseAudio's design is indeed correct. Aside: I might not like PulseAudio much (I don't need any of it's new features) but it sure is better than esd or aRTs -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: Because as soon as you disable ALSA dmix and/or Pulse, suddenly you get acceptable sound latency. With OSS4, which has in-kernel mixing, it doesn't matter if you enable the mixer or disable it; sound always has acceptable latency. By that reasoning, the GUI should be in-kernel too. It would be then really responsive al the time. I don't buy the argument. Thus, I can only conclude that mixing has to happen in-kernel. But I base this only on the ALSA/Pulse vs OSS4 comparison. It could also be that the user-space implementation of ALSA just sucks. But that's hard to believe, since if that were the case they would have fixed it several years ago already. No, it doesn't has to happen in-kernel; all the linux based phones (which deal primarily with, you know, audio, including heavy use of multimedia) use PulseAudio. And these are not very powerful machines; so if the mixing in user space works in low powered devices, it must work everywhere. I don't buy this argument either. It sounds reasonable from a designer's point of view. But a system is useless if it's only designed good but doesn't actually work in a satisfactory manner. It works for me, I repeat, and for a lot of other folks too. It's not only a design decision made because it's elegant; it's made because it works in a satisfactory manner (ex. me, others, Linux phones), and because it's more flexible: put it in the kernel, and you loose the capacity to do important changes and extensions (specially with the way the Linux kernel development works). In short, because it works in a satisfactory manner (to me and many others, including all the N900 and Android users out there), I also don't buy this argument. Sorry, that just pretentious of you here. PulseAudio is the most flamed at, hated, sound-related software around. And this is because it does *not* work for many, many users, and the first thing they try to do is find out how to disable the thing. Sorry, but I believe the you are the one being pretentious; how long has been since you tried PulseAudio? It has come a lng way, and I haven't seen any real flames against PulseAudio in many months (and it's enabled in all major distributions). And that is because it's working (I repeat my words) for me and many more. You're mistaken in that a mixer should be in the same boat as network streaming, bluetooth, etc, etc. I believe the *mixer* should be in-kernel. Everything else doesn't need to be. PulseAudio's extreme latency problems (which even upstream admits can't be fixed easily) stem from that. I respectfully disagree; the kernel should pass along data and messages to the sound hardware, and everything else (*including mixing*) should be in user space. Not only in theory from an academic and aesthetic point of view; *it also works*, to me, to many users who doesn't complain (despite PulseAudio being used by default in ALL major distributions), and to ALL the users of Android and MeeGo. And to finish, I don't know how much you know about technical decisions and design, but I know that Linus refused to accept OSS4 in the kernel, I know that all major distributions decided to go with PulseAudio, and I know that Intel, Nokia and Google are betting for it. So, no offense, but I trust more in those guys and the arguments I have heard from them. And the consensus with them is to use PulseAudio, and leave the mixing in user space. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Instituto de Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem
Sorry, but I believe the you are the one being pretentious; how long has been since you tried PulseAudio? It has come a lng way, and I haven't seen any real flames against PulseAudio in many months (and it's enabled in all major distributions). And that is because it's working (I repeat my words) for me and many more. Windows works for many people it does not make it the best OS or the only one. In Ubuntu they went from oss to PulseAudio. I bet that 90% of Ubuntu users do not know that PulseAudio uses Alsa. And to finish, I don't know how much you know about technical decisions and design, but I know that Linus refused to accept OSS4 in the kernel, I know that all major distributions decided to go with PulseAudio, and I know that Intel, Nokia and Google are betting for it. Why do you think PulseAudio is userspace. Haha Setting up Alsa was/is hard to do but with my on board chip it was plug and play. If Alsa was easy to setup then PulseAudio would not be main stream. Alsa trys to hardware mix if it can not it mixes in software. PulseAudio mixes in software and never trys to mix in hardware. Did I get that right? So if your n900 sound chip can not mix in hardware then you may as well use PulseAudio. As the load is still on the CPU. At the end of the day I want to pick a sound system and use it. I do not want one forced on me.
