[gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Dmitry S. Makovey]

 Hi everybody,

not trying to stir up a flamewar about pulseaudio viability etc. I want
to make my setup work *with* the pulseaudio, but I feel like I'm missing
something. So I'd rather avoid comments "don't use it then" if at all
possible.

What I have:
Gentoo + KDE-4.4.5 + pulseaudio-0.9.21.1

How I use it:
In KDE I've got Xine backend setup for playback (if I use gstreamer I
get higher frequency of problems popping up, see below).

Problems I see:
Whenever any app tries to use KDE sound notification system I have a
good chance of sound becoming garbled in Amarok (while listening to the
music), heck even non-KDE apps like Skype would work fine until
something else decides to use sound device (like gnash/lighspark, etc.).
Chances of getting garbled sound are 50/50 - it's never a guarantee:
sometimes it works - sometimes it "crashes". To get sound back I have to
restart app (Skype, Firefox, Amarok, etc.).

How I configured it:
$ cat /etc/asound.conf
# as per http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup#ALSAApplications
# we're using pulseaudio for everything now...
#
pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}
 
ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}

$ cat ~/.asoundrc
pcm.hda-intel {
   type hw
   card 0
}

ctl.hda-intel {
   type hw
   card 0
}

I've been living with above problems for a while now not having much
time to investigate and writing it off as immaturity of stack, but it
was out for quite a while and obviously people use it with better rate
of success (judging by online resources).

My HW looks like this:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                      HDA NVidia at 0xfe020000 irq 20
 2 [U0x46d0x809    ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x809
                      USB Device 0x46d:0x809 at usb-0000:00:02.1-2, high
speed

(second device is a Logitec's USB WebCam).

I realize it may be a question more geared toward pulseaudio community
but I'd rather find out whether there's something Gentoo-specific I'm
missing first.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 19.10.2010 06:14, schrieb Dmitry S. Makovey:
[...]
> 
> What I have:
> Gentoo + KDE-4.4.5 + pulseaudio-0.9.21.1
> 
> How I use it:
> In KDE I've got Xine backend setup for playback (if I use gstreamer I
> get higher frequency of problems popping up, see below).
> 
> Problems I see:
> Whenever any app tries to use KDE sound notification system I have a
> good chance of sound becoming garbled in Amarok (while listening to the
> music), heck even non-KDE apps like Skype would work fine until
> something else decides to use sound device (like gnash/lighspark, etc.).
> Chances of getting garbled sound are 50/50 - it's never a guarantee:
> sometimes it works - sometimes it "crashes". To get sound back I have to
> restart app (Skype, Firefox, Amarok, etc.).
> 
[...]

For me, this sounds like a mixing problem. Maybe the problem is a bit
obfuscated because some applications use alsa directly, other use phonon
and yet others use pulseaudio. I cannot give you very clear directions
but this should get you going:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Hardware_mixing,_software_mixing

Hope this helps,
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[András Csányi]

2010/10/19 Florian Philipp <lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net>:
> Am 19.10.2010 06:14, schrieb Dmitry S. Makovey:
> [...]
>>
>> What I have:
>> Gentoo + KDE-4.4.5 + pulseaudio-0.9.21.1
>>
>> How I use it:
>> In KDE I've got Xine backend setup for playback (if I use gstreamer I
>> get higher frequency of problems popping up, see below).
>>
>> Problems I see:
>> Whenever any app tries to use KDE sound notification system I have a
>> good chance of sound becoming garbled in Amarok (while listening to the
>> music), heck even non-KDE apps like Skype would work fine until
>> something else decides to use sound device (like gnash/lighspark, etc.).
>> Chances of getting garbled sound are 50/50 - it's never a guarantee:
>> sometimes it works - sometimes it "crashes". To get sound back I have to
>> restart app (Skype, Firefox, Amarok, etc.).
>>
> [...]
>
> For me, this sounds like a mixing problem. Maybe the problem is a bit
> obfuscated because some applications use alsa directly, other use phonon
> and yet others use pulseaudio. I cannot give you very clear directions
> but this should get you going:
> http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Hardware_mixing,_software_mixing

Hi Guys,

I have the same problem to as Dmitry. But I'm confused because my
system doesn't have neither /etc/asoundrc nor ~.asoundrc file. Can you
tell me which package contains this?

My system is amd64.

Thanks for clarification in advance!

András

-- 
- -
--  Csanyi Andras (Sayusi Ando)  -- http://sayusi.hu --
http://facebook.com/andras.csanyi
--  ""Trust in God and keep your gunpowder dry!" - Cromwell

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Steffen Loos]

19.10.2010 11:06, wrote András Csányi:
> 2010/10/19 Florian Philipp<lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net>:
>
> I have the same problem to as Dmitry. But I'm confused because my
> system doesn't have neither /etc/asoundrc nor ~.asoundrc file. Can you
> tell me which package contains this?

The files are pure optional to configure alsa manually. Hence (i think) no package includes this files.

(Have a look at: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/.asoundrc)

Steffen

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Yohan Pereira]

On Tuesday 19 October 2010 9:44:35 am Dmitry S. Makovey wrote:work fine until
> something else decides to use sound device (like gnash/lighspark, etc.).
> Chances of getting garbled sound are 50/50 - it's never a guarantee:
> sometimes it works - sometimes it "crashes". To get sound back I have to
> restart app (Skype, Firefox, Amarok, etc.).

do you have 
media-plugins/gst-plugins-pulse
installed? that way gstreamer should be able to use pulseaudio for output. and 
since gnash uses gstreamer ..... 

On Tuesday 19 October 2010 2:29:03 pm Florian Philipp wrote:
>  other use phonon
> and yet others use pulseaudio.

phonon can be configured to use pluseaudio (move pulseaudio to the top of the 
list in kde Multimedia settings).

also stupid queston but do you have the pulseaudio flag enabled?

ps. never tried pluseaudio on gentoo .. just guessing.
however i want to try it soon, being able to redirect the audio from my laptop 
to my PC is pretty cool. 

-- 
- Yohan Pereira.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Paul Hartman]

2010/10/18 Dmitry S. Makovey <dimon@makovey.net>:
> I realize it may be a question more geared toward pulseaudio community
> but I'd rather find out whether there's something Gentoo-specific I'm
> missing first.

Hi, do you know about this page?

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/PulseAudio

I tried Pulseaudio in my Gentoo once by using that guide.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Dmitry Makovey]

 On 10/19/2010 09:48 AM, Paul Hartman wrote:
> 2010/10/18 Dmitry S. Makovey <dimon@makovey.net>:
>> I realize it may be a question more geared toward pulseaudio community
>> but I'd rather find out whether there's something Gentoo-specific I'm
>> missing first.
> Hi, do you know about this page?
>
> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/PulseAudio
>
> I tried Pulseaudio in my Gentoo once by using that guide.
thanks. I'm pretty sure I've followed that page before, but hey - it was
a long time ago. I adjusted my setup according to what it says *now* -
we'll see what comes out of it. I followed links a bit deeper and also
checked my setup against
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-789181-highlight-pulseaudio.html
adjusting a thing or two (like using hal module vs udev, however
something tells me I'll be switching back pretty soon...).

I'll try it out for a while and post back the results.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Dmitry Makovey]

 On 10/19/2010 09:48 AM, Paul Hartman wrote:
>> Hi, do you know about this page?
>> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/PulseAudio I tried Pulseaudio in my
>> Gentoo once by using that guide. 
> thanks. I'm pretty sure I've followed that page before, but hey - it was
> a long time ago. I adjusted my setup according to what it says *now* -
> we'll see what comes out of it. I followed links a bit deeper and also
> checked my setup against
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-789181-highlight-pulseaudio.html
> adjusting a thing or two (like using hal module vs udev, however
> something tells me I'll be switching back pretty soon...).
>
> I'll try it out for a while and post back the results.

well my attempts are unsuccessful so far. Applying "every trick in a
book" from the above links I've got nowhere. I can reliably reproduce
the problem: start amarok, try to start playing movie with, say mplayer,
skip through couple of frames - and voila! sound is gone. I've tried
both Xine and GStreamer backends so far with the same outcome.

So what I've done on top of my setup is: installed alsa-plugins, changed
pulseaudio configs as per above forum post (checking along the way that
my setup matches).

Interesting "touch" on this entire ordeal I see "Internal Audio Analog
stereo" after
startup, but if I kill pulseaudio process with:

/usr/bin/pulseaudio --kill

my Multimedia settings will display "PulseAudio server". Problems remain
the same though. It could be the Mplayer's fault - I switched it over
from "ao=alsa" to "ao=pulse" and same happens.

Right now I've got to the point where one app may lock the device while
other seems to be sending output to /dev/null and keeps sending it after
app that locked device quits (looks like this is the result of using
GStreamer over Xine backend).