[gentoo-user] no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[gentoo-user] no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Francisco Ares]

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Hi,

I have just upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 and after that I was unable to
hear the sound of videoclips from YouTube, for instance.

I remember there was a little trick to make past versions of FF to work
with pulse audio (that I use so VirtualBox machines can also play sounds),
but can't find what it was.

Any hints, please?

Thanks
Francisco

-- 
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you
and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have
one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."
- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [gentoo-user] no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Claudio Roberto França Pereira]

$ cat /etc/asound.conf
pcm.pulse {
        type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
        type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
        type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
        type pulse
}

Do you have this?

Re: Re: [gentoo-user] no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[frares]

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On , Claudio Roberto França Pereira <spideybr@gmail.com> wrote:
> $ cat /etc/asound.conf
> pcm.pulse {
> type pulse
> }

> ctl.pulse {
> type pulse
> }

> pcm.!default {
> type pulse
> }

> ctl.!default {
> type pulse
> }

> Do you have this?


Yes, and also /etc/firefox/firefoxrc containing FIREFOX_DSP="padsp"

Thanks
Francisco

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Re: Re: [gentoo-user] no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Claudio Roberto França Pereira]

> Yes, and also /etc/firefox/firefoxrc containing FIREFOX_DSP="padsp"
>
> Thanks
> Francisco

I can't reproduce this. I'm using ~amd64, firefox 8, pulseaudio 1.1.
Do you have multiple sound cards or sound output devices? Maybe the
sound is going to another sink that the one you expected? I'm under
KDE, and KMix have a cool "extension" by PA that let me direct streams
online to the sink I wish.

[gentoo-user] Re: no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[walt]

On 12/04/2011 01:41 PM, Francisco Ares wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have just upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 and after that I was unable
> to hear the sound of videoclips from YouTube, for instance.
>
> I remember there was a little trick to make past versions of FF to
> work with pulse audio (that I use so VirtualBox machines can also
> play sounds), but can't find what it was.

Hi Francisco.  I can't answer your Firefox question, sorry, but may
I ask you a question about pulseaudio instead?

There are several of us old atavistic grumps (you know who you are,
Alan) who can't see any use for pulseaudio and therefore disable it
with useflags and any other way we can.

For example, I use vbox all the time and have no problem getting
sound from my vbox guests, or from firefox or any other application.

Sound "just works" without pulseaudio -- so why do I need it?

Sadly, gnome3 has made pulseaudio mandatory if I want to use the
volume control applet on gnome-panel (and I do) so I now have the
pulseaudio daemon running in the background, but all of my apps
are built without the pulseaudio useflag and all produce good
sound even when I kill the pulseaudio daemon manually.

I still don't get the whole idea behind pulseaudio.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Claudio Roberto França Pereira]

The idea behind pulseaudio is live switching of streams. ALSA is great
if you have only one audio card, but as soon as you introduce a
bluetooth headset, a headphone, a HDMI display with sound output, ALSA
can't handle real time stream redirection. Sure, you can use scripts
to toggle .asoundrc profiles, but even then you'll need to restart the
softwares that produce audio.
Here I have a HDMI display (an hdtv) and a headphone. I mostly send my
audio to my tv, but if I'm using the computer late at night, or if I'm
to listen to high volume music, I'd switch the affecting streams to my
headphone, without the need to mess with sound configuration files and
to restart my sound engine.

PulseAudio is to audio what X.org is to video: stream mixing software.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Francisco Ares]

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On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 9:00 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/04/2011 01:41 PM, Francisco Ares wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have just upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 and after that I was unable
>> to hear the sound of videoclips from YouTube, for instance.
>>
>> I remember there was a little trick to make past versions of FF to
>> work with pulse audio (that I use so VirtualBox machines can also
>> play sounds), but can't find what it was.
>>
>
> Hi Francisco.  I can't answer your Firefox question, sorry, but may
> I ask you a question about pulseaudio instead?
>
> There are several of us old atavistic grumps (you know who you are,
> Alan) who can't see any use for pulseaudio and therefore disable it
> with useflags and any other way we can.
>
> For example, I use vbox all the time and have no problem getting
> sound from my vbox guests, or from firefox or any other application.
>
> Sound "just works" without pulseaudio -- so why do I need it?
>
> Sadly, gnome3 has made pulseaudio mandatory if I want to use the
> volume control applet on gnome-panel (and I do) so I now have the
> pulseaudio daemon running in the background, but all of my apps
> are built without the pulseaudio useflag and all produce good
> sound even when I kill the pulseaudio daemon manually.
>
> I still don't get the whole idea behind pulseaudio.
>
>
>
Hi,

How do you manage to get VirtualBox sounds without pulseaudio?  That's the
only point that keeps me from removing it.

Oops!  When did VBox start to use ALSA?  Let me try...

Thank you all!
Francisco

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Mick]

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On Wednesday 07 Dec 2011 00:16:31 Claudio Roberto França Pereira wrote:
> The idea behind pulseaudio is live switching of streams. ALSA is great
> if you have only one audio card, but as soon as you introduce a
> bluetooth headset, a headphone, a HDMI display with sound output, ALSA
> can't handle real time stream redirection. Sure, you can use scripts
> to toggle .asoundrc profiles, but even then you'll need to restart the
> softwares that produce audio.
> Here I have a HDMI display (an hdtv) and a headphone. I mostly send my
> audio to my tv, but if I'm using the computer late at night, or if I'm
> to listen to high volume music, I'd switch the affecting streams to my
> headphone, without the need to mess with sound configuration files and
> to restart my sound engine.
> 
> PulseAudio is to audio what X.org is to video: stream mixing software.

I see ... so for many use cases that do not require to selectively modify the 
volume of different outputs, pulseaudio is really not necessary at all (I can 
always plug/unplug an earphone jack or what not).  That would not make 
pulseaudio the default selection IMHO, but anyway - isn't that what jack is 
used for?  Is pulseaudio another jack application?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Francisco Ares]

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On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 8:37 PM, Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday 07 Dec 2011 00:16:31 Claudio Roberto França Pereira wrote:
> > The idea behind pulseaudio is live switching of streams. ALSA is great
> > if you have only one audio card, but as soon as you introduce a
> > bluetooth headset, a headphone, a HDMI display with sound output, ALSA
> > can't handle real time stream redirection. Sure, you can use scripts
> > to toggle .asoundrc profiles, but even then you'll need to restart the
> > softwares that produce audio.
> > Here I have a HDMI display (an hdtv) and a headphone. I mostly send my
> > audio to my tv, but if I'm using the computer late at night, or if I'm
> > to listen to high volume music, I'd switch the affecting streams to my
> > headphone, without the need to mess with sound configuration files and
> > to restart my sound engine.
> >
> > PulseAudio is to audio what X.org is to video: stream mixing software.
>
> I see ... so for many use cases that do not require to selectively modify
> the
> volume of different outputs, pulseaudio is really not necessary at all (I
> can
> always plug/unplug an earphone jack or what not).  That would not make
> pulseaudio the default selection IMHO, but anyway - isn't that what jack is
> used for?  Is pulseaudio another jack application?
> --
> Regards,
> Mick
>


Now I've got another problem: how to revert back to simple alsa...

Thanks!
Francisco

-- 
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you
and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have
one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."
- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: no sound on upgraded Firefox from 7 to 8 - using pulse audio

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 22:37:30 +0000
Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:

> > PulseAudio is to audio what X.org is to video: stream mixing
> > software.  
> 
> I see ... so for many use cases that do not require to selectively
> modify the volume of different outputs, pulseaudio is really not
> necessary at all (I can always plug/unplug an earphone jack or what
> not).  That would not make pulseaudio the default selection IMHO, but
> anyway - isn't that what jack is used for?  Is pulseaudio another
> jack application?

No, not really.

Jack is for professional applications where detail is everything.
Things like latency - it becomes a nightmare trying to deal with even
small amounts of latency when doing good quality audio mixing.

Pulseaudio is an effort to deal with current and future
trends in regular everyday usage. To borrow Claudio's example - it's
not all that uncommon these days to have external speakers, built-in
speakers, bluetooth headsets and HDMI all hook up to the same consumer
machine, all coming and going as the user plugs stuff in and out. The
user wants it all to JustWork nicely. This is a quite different thing
from what jack set out to solve.

Of course whether jack, alsa, pulseaudio, oss or oss4 succeeded in
solving any of these things is a debate for another time, let's rather
just stick to design goals for now :-)


-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com