On Sun, Jul 19, 2026 at 5:04 PM vermaden <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi. > > For a start lets define some TERMS. I use UPPERCASE not to shout - but to > underline a part of the sentence that is needed to be underlined - this is > plain email - I do not have Bold/Underscore/Italic options - keep that in > mind - now - to the core of the issue ... > > I always considered FreeBSD OSS audio/sound subsystem superior to all > ALSA/PulseAudio/PipeWire and other dramas from the Linux world ... but not > anymore. > > Somewhere between 14.3-RELEASE and 14.4-RELEASE things begin to get broken - > I thought that upgrade to latest and greatest 15.1-RELEASE would solve my > issues - as there were LOTS of sound/audio related things. > > I will not even start about PITA syntax of mixer(1) which went into this: > > % mixer -f ${DEV} vol.volume=+0.05 > > ... from MUCH MORE friendly syntax. > > But these random 'boozing' sounds are just unacceptable ... and I can not > even tell where they came from ... is it OSS problem? Is is PulseAudio > problem? Something in between? Because there is NOTHING in the logs for audio.
PulseAudio is a disaster. I recommend switching to PipeWire with the pipewire-pulse compatibility layer as a drop in replacement and my OSS sink: https://www.freshports.org/audio/pipewire-spa-oss-ng. Only major outstanding work is pipewire/pipewire-pulse don't know how to elevate their priority on FreeBSD and they really should be RT. Disable the stock PulseAudio autostart. On a KDE box the package drops `/usr/local/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop`. Override it in your home directory: cp /usr/local/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop \ ~/.config/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop and add to the end: Hidden=true Start PipeWire from the session. I use a small wrapper and a KDE autostart desktop file: `~/.local/bin/start-pipewire-freebsd`: #!/bin/sh if [ -z "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR" ]; then export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/var/run/user/$(id -u)" mkdir -p "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR" chmod 700 "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR" fi pgrep -U "$(id -u)" -x pipewire >/dev/null || pipewire & sleep 1 pgrep -U "$(id -u)" -x wireplumber >/dev/null || wireplumber & pgrep -U "$(id -u)" -x pipewire-pulse >/dev/null || pipewire-pulse & `~/.config/autostart/pipewire-freebsd.desktop`: [Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=PipeWire FreeBSD Exec=/home/kev009/.local/bin/start-pipewire-freebsd X-KDE-autostart-phase=1 NoDisplay=true Log out and back in (or terminate pulseaudio and run the script once by hand). Confirm the stack: pgrep -a pipewire pgrep -a wireplumber pactl info # should say "PulseAudio (on PipeWire ...)" wpctl status # sinks/sources with [freebsd-oss] Desktop volume keys, pavucontrol, and `wpctl set-volume` should drive the OSS mixer on devices that expose one, instead of only attenuating in software. > Its also possible to get that file from my personal 'mediafire.com' account > here: > - > https://mediafire.com/file/jw3cpk8g77rvks2/freebsd-tragic-audio-sound.mp4/file > > ... and its not some fancy laptop from yesterday ... its a ThinkPad T480 from > 2018 for fuck sake - hardware like that used to run smooth as Carlos Sainz > 'smooth operator' in Singapore GP ... but not anymore. > > I do not even know what to add here ... its a message send our of despair ... > as newer releases only made these things worse ... I have been repeating this > over and over again - but its again probably the issue that 'too less' > FreeBSD developers use FreeBSD as their daily driver/desktop/laptop system. > > Sorry to disappoint. > > Regards, > vermaden > >
