On Wed, Dec 24, 2014 at 04:45:01PM -0600, T.J. Duchene wrote: > What is wrong with PulseAudio? I agree, it can be a PITA, but > unless you are concerned about some kind of systemd dependency I do > not understand why Devuan would be seeking a replacement. It's no > worse than Jack or any of the other alternatives, which are less > compatible.
I think it's better to think about what do we get to gain and what to lose from pulseaudio. Gains: * ability to reroute streams mid-run (like, speakers->headphones), but only if they are connected to physically separate sound cards * a common way to direct streams (without, you need to read man pages and learn obscure arguments that differ per program -- if a program has the ability to use a non-default output at all) * no need for manual configuration of certain outputs, like bluetooth headphones * can do basic configuration of certain commonish scenarios (like 5.1) for you Problems: * new breakage (won't work if ALSA doesn't, is likely to fail on its own) * buggy like hell: * likes to take 100% of a CPU core for no obvious reasons * on my box, needs to be killed after a suspend to get usable sound again * on my box, randomly likes to introduce noise * it is impossible to do non-basic configuration. For example, with 5.1, you can not specify the routing matrix, and thus reorder channels, do non-standard mixing, etc In other words, it does significantly increase user friendliness while providing little actually new functionality. On the other hand, unlike, say, network-manager which is pure damage for non-newbies, pulseaudio does give quite a bit of convenience -- unless you enjoy "mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=2.0" or Clementine|Tools|Preferences|Playback|GStreamer audio engine|Output device|hw:2 -- // If you believe in so-called "intellectual property", please immediately // cease using counterfeit alphabets. Instead, contact the nearest temple // of Amon, whose priests will provide you with scribal services for all // your writing needs, for Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory prices. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list [email protected] https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
