Hi all, Have been chasing audio issues here for some time with the advent of Ubuntu 9.10 and Linux Mint Helena (based on Ubuntu 9.10)
I have had a plethora of issues that have shown up with audio and unless I was using fldigi and have certain requirements to operate my station the way it should, I might not have noticed some of these things. After it is all said and done here is my personal feeling: I think the use of Pusle Audio came about to make the mainstream Linux distros, more acceptable to the average young very heavy Audio & Video oriented Windows users. I have no doubt that it works very well for handling all the audio and using the individual programs functions for audio output (most only have a volume control). I am not sold on this approach as yet for someone like us perhaps that desire/need a little better control of audio inputs and outputs. I too have noticed a reported increase in CPU use at times with these distro's and most noticed with fldigi which is what I use the most on my Linux boxes that use these resources. Stands to reason. MY Solution to date (still working on it) 1st: I had become so accustomed to Linux not requiring so much RAM that as the distros have evolved I simply didn't have enough RAM on my older box to facilitate the High Demand. Sooooo I maxed out the ram and this helped alleviate most all of the problems. Yes, even the CPU use dropped. (not educated enough to understand completely why, yet) 2nd: On the Linux Mint system I have chosen to use Port Audio and installed the Alsa Mixer Control to maintain the level of control I like to have over the audio for my uses. All is working well at this point. 3rd: On the Ubuntu 9.10 system I am allowing Pulse Audio to continue to run so I can learn more about it. So far it seems to have smoothed out and I haven't really had to many issues and of course I am forced to use fldigi to manage the mixer which is working well so far. 4th: I eliminated an interrmitent ground loop in my system and placed a toroid on the speaker wires. I do not understand why just yet but when using Pulse Audio this manifested as distortion on transmit. I did not observe this when using Port Audio. So I was forced to re-evaluate my Station and in accordance with good Amateur Radio Practices made substantive improvements in my set-up that may have caused other problems at some point in time. Note: Both Mint and Ubuntu are separate bootable partitions on the same box so all hardware is the same. Concern: For my portable EmComm set up's making use of older laptops (donated and more expendable as they get some rough use) I may have to concentrate on using less resource hungry distributions like Puppy Linux which is working very well at this time with the latest Alpha version. I am not sure what all this is telling me about the future of Linux Distros and Hardware but we do have a lot of options. By the way Fldigi is working flawlessly on Mac OS X laptop and Mac Mini and I haven't noticed any problems in the XP virtual machines I am using for testing, although these are all on later more up to date boxes which may be why. It seems there are things we can do to help if we are to have and use Pulse Audio up to and including purchasing more up to date boxes. My success with Port Audio and Mixer controls may also be an option for some users as well. Not sure if this helps anyone or not but as I had voiced my frustrations privately to Dave about Pulse Audio, I still continue testing to search for some solutions. 73's all Mike On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 6:52 AM, Roger Beever <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi. > Swapped speakers over and fully plugged in the filtered supply, that > feeds the transceiver Power supply, which was not quite fully in the > socket and was being disconnected when I lent the PC forward to see the > rear connections. It's an ill wind that blows no good as they say. > Well I streamed some audio form the net (Fridays Archers for the UK > readers the rest may not know the radio serial)) and switched the > Firefox BBC I player to the PCI card now on the good speakers. > During the streaming the top task bar Speaker ICON indicated that it had > muted but the stream was fine. So I'm chasing something that is still > working to the default audio. > 73 Roger > > > _______________________________________________ > fldigi-alpha mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fldigi-alpha >
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