Re: [gentoo-user] ALSA wizard...

[Jorge Almeida <jjalmeida@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 8:34 PM Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 12:09 PM Jorge Almeida <jjalmeida@gmail.com> wrote:
> >

> >
> > Since you use pulseaudio (per your latest post): can you send the
> > contents of a wav file to an external DAC via toslink, without
> > pulseaudio messing with the file? (Most people don't seem to care
> > whether the signal is first converted to analog, and resampled, and
> > converted to digital, and whatnot, before leaving the computer...)
> >

> I'll investigate what I can do sending files by hand. However on the USB only machine all the internal sound card hardware is blacklisted so modules aren't loaded. I don't know that I want to upset the environment on that machine very much but a bit more about this at the bottom of this post.
>
 No, please don't bother. I only mentioned because I thought you might
know it out of hand. I'll search documentation about pulseaudio, if I
can find it. It occurred to me that it would be an acceptable setup if
pulseaudio could be coaxed into managing just the USB card (as hw
card, not as virtual card) and leave the HD audio alone. I would use
the USB to voice chat and the MB card to everything else. (I would
have to buy another pair of headphones, but maybe headphones for
speech-only would not add too much clutter to the desk...)


> and running on your system. You probably don't have the qt version on a non-KDE system I suspect.
I don't have pulseaudio installed, I'm quite sure. I have qt, because
some applications use it.

>
> I am tending to trust this link for a description of pulseaudio's purpose.
>
> https://superuser.com/questions/144648/how-do-alsa-and-pulseaudio-relate
Will check it.
>

> Anyway, last thing for now would be that I'm still willing and slightly interested in looking at discord/zoom/whatever for my own needs. If I make some headway, or if you want to collaborate in that area let me know, either through gentoo-user of privately.

If you need a voice chat to talk with your friends/co-workers/etc,
maybe mumble would be a good choice. It's the only one that recognized
my hw and allowed to calibrate the micro. It also allows to choose the
sound source by hand, if needed (contrary to all the others). And it
is open source. (But it would require that one of you setup a server,
or else use a paying server.)
>
Cheers

Jorge