From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1OF9FV-0005DZ-PR for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 20 May 2010 17:09:33 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C49FBE00C2; Thu, 20 May 2010 22:08:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C1ECE00C2 for ; Thu, 20 May 2010 22:08:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1DF521B40C7 for ; Thu, 20 May 2010 22:08:53 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at gentoo.org X-Spam-Score: -2.674 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.674 required=5.5 tests=[AWL=-0.694, BAYES_00=-2.599, RCVD_IN_SORBS_WEB=0.619] Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id kn1uk4M2llUb for ; Thu, 20 May 2010 22:08:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lo.gmane.org (lo.gmane.org [80.91.229.12]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2ED0E1B4077 for ; Thu, 20 May 2010 22:08:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OFDuo-00008u-S0 for gentoo-user@gentoo.org; Fri, 21 May 2010 00:08:30 +0200 Received: from athedsl-372456.home.otenet.gr ([79.131.6.230]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 21 May 2010 00:08:30 +0200 Received: from realnc by athedsl-372456.home.otenet.gr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Fri, 21 May 2010 00:08:30 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org connect(): No such file or directory From: Nikos Chantziaras Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 01:08:56 +0300 Organization: Lucas Barks Message-ID: References: <201005192159.29314.koesterreich@gmx.net> <201005201015.41416.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> <201005201313.21106.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: athedsl-372456.home.otenet.gr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100410 Thunderbird/3.0.4 In-Reply-To: Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 85fcf921-619f-422f-b52c-5db5002b9e68 X-Archives-Hash: 1fd7225ee90b2430568d562ee79012ac On 05/20/2010 10:25 PM, Canek Pel=C3=A1ez Vald=C3=A9s wrote: > On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wr= ote: > [snip] >> What doesn't work is PulseAudio, actually. Too many problems with it.= Pulse >> is simply broken by design; it's too far from the kernel to be any goo= d. > > If I may use (most of) your words: "Well, it works here. It's been > rock-solid through months." And with various use-cases, if I may add. > > Can you elaborate why the audio architecture has to be close to the > kernel? The part that talks to the hardware obviously has to, but why > the part that handles the features, the mixes, the virtual devices? Because as soon as you disable ALSA dmix and/or Pulse, suddenly you get=20 acceptable sound latency. With OSS4, which has in-kernel mixing, it doesn't matter if you enable=20 the mixer or disable it; sound always has acceptable latency. Thus, I can only conclude that mixing has to happen in-kernel. But I=20 base this only on the ALSA/Pulse vs OSS4 comparison. It could also be=20 that the user-space implementation of ALSA just sucks. But that's hard=20 to believe, since if that were the case they would have fixed it several=20 years ago already. > I'm under the impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that it was one of > the major reasons to leave OSS4 outside the upstream kernel; too many > stuff in there that belongs in user space. It sounds reasonable to me. It sounds reasonable from a designer's point of view. But a system is=20 useless if it's only designed good but doesn't actually work in a=20 satisfactory manner. > Specially when PulseAudio just works, for me and many more. Sorry, that just pretentious of you here. PulseAudio is the most flamed=20 at, hated, sound-related software around. And this is because it does=20 *not* work for many, many users, and the first thing they try to do is=20 find out how to disable the thing. >> ALSA can't switch to Bluetooth either. You could use PulseAudio with = OSS4 >> instead of with ALSA though, but this is not officially supported. > > Indeed it's not supported, because it's (using your words again) > "broken by design" by trying to do too many things inside the kernel > that belong in user space. That's my understanding at least; please > correct me if you believe I'm mistaken. You're mistaken in that a mixer should be in the same boat as network=20 streaming, bluetooth, etc, etc. I believe the *mixer* should be=20 in-kernel. Everything else doesn't need to be. PulseAudio's extreme=20 latency problems (which even upstream admits can't be fixed easily) stem=20 from that.