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The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric)
The MadRhetoric blog has an interview with PulseAudio developer Lennart Poettering focused on what's new in Fedora 11. "A lot of the changes we introduced with PA are not directly visible to the user. For example the so called 'glitch-free' logic in PA is very important for a modern audio stack, however the normal user will never notice it -- except maybe because when we introduced it initially a lot of driver bugs got exposed that people were not aware of before because that driver functionality (usually timing related) was not really depended on by any application. In fact even now many of the older drivers expose broken timing that makes usage with PA not as much fun as it could be."
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The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric) Posted May 22, 2009 20:32 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
Someone remind me why I should use pulseaudio when my system is glitch-free with ALSA and an RT-enabled kernel? (I do not use any applications requiring jack; nor do I make use of network sound transport.)
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 22, 2009 20:40 UTC (Fri) by scottt (subscriber, #5028) [Link]
I personally love the USB and Bluetooth Headset support that PulseAudio offers.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 22, 2009 21:04 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
It would come as a surprise for me if ALSA did not already support them.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 22, 2009 21:26 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
If you figure out a way to make use of them easily without PulseAudio, I would be interested in knowing that. There is a bunch of other enhancements that the interview mentions as well.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 23, 2009 17:51 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
You can use them without using PA. Alsa has a 'bluetooth' plugin that will do the dirty work for you...
So you link up your bluetooth headset or whatever using the gnome bluetooth stuff or whatever your favorite way to do that. Then you need to use hcitool to find out the address of your bluetooth headset.
Then you need to create this asoundrc, or add it to your asoundrc:
Then set that as the default device or use whatever alsa-aware application you prefer and have it use the 'bluetooth' device. Not too difficult and it works reliably.
Also about as desktop friendly as a eyeball laceration.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 23, 2009 21:09 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
This isn't a out of box solution as PulseAudio is in Fedora 11. Do any distributions do the ALSA configuration for bluetooth headphones automatically? If not, this as you indicate is not user friendly at all.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 26, 2009 9:47 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Meh, Bluetooth may be nasty with ALSA. I wouldn't know as I've never even *seen* a computer with a Bluetooth adapter.
Plugging in a USB headset on the other hand just works without issue.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 26, 2009 15:39 UTC (Tue) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
> as I've never even *seen* a computer with a Bluetooth adapter
It's not exactly rare: many (most?) laptops come with integrated Bluetooth these days.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 26, 2009 19:55 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Forester says that in 2008 2/3 of laptops shipped with Bluetooth capability built-in and it's still rising fast. 100% of Macs and smartphones have it. USB adapters are regularly less than $15.
There are lots of things wrong with bluetooth but availability is not one of them!
Personally, I just replaced my USB headphones with over-ear bluetooth headphones and, although their audio quality is lacking, I'd hate to go back. May I go the rest of my life without needing to untangle the cord from my office chair again, or forgetting that the headphones are around my neck as I walk away.
Now, why do all bluetooth headphones and headsets have that awful 1-button interface?? Press for 2 seconds to turn on, 3 seconds to turn off, 4 seconds to pair, 5 seconds to display battery, etc. It's idiotic! I hope this gets fixed soon.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 26, 2009 22:29 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
haven't you heard, users are confused by having more than one control (toung planted firmly in cheek)
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 10:48 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>USB adapters are regularly less than $15.
In that case it seems pretty cheeky that adding Bluetooth to a Dell laptop costs an extra £30.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 17:40 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yes indeed. I wonder if they make noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones?
I'm quite attached to my current Sennheisers, but since they've already got a battery you'd think Bluetooth as well would be a natural for them. (For all I know they already make them and I just hadn't noticed.)
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 18:48 UTC (Wed) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
No need for noise cancelling, just just proper noise-isolating in-ears, i.e. the Etymotic ety8.
Noise-isolates 35-40 dB, sounds a hell of a lot better too (I only listened to my own non-Bluetooth ER-4P, I don't know how bad A2DP kills the quality).
Only problem is that for some, they aren't very comfortable, so it would propably be a good idea to try them first.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 19:27 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I'm specifically avoiding in-ears because I find them agonizingly painful.
It's over-ear or nothing for me.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 20:00 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
I am specifically avoiding on-the-ear because some models just squash your ears, and if you happen to wear glasses it's even worse, and yet worse if the bail is not made of gum (the latter is done at the request of customers who potentially suffer lots of shock activity, such as kids in school sport).
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 20:50 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yeah, that can be a problem: I tried a good few headphones before I found
one that didn't feel like you were wearing a vise.
(Bail made of *gum*? Is this some US-specific peculiarity?)
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 21:11 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
Should have said polyethyleneorsomethingrubberlike, not gum.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 27, 2009 22:35 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Ah, right. For a moment there I thought you meant gum as in chewing gum.
Oddly disturbing.
Useful PulseAudio features Posted May 29, 2009 20:40 UTC (Fri) by asdlfiui788b (guest, #58839) [Link]
Well don't push them all the way in then silly.
The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric) Posted May 22, 2009 21:09 UTC (Fri) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
Also per application volume sounde somewhat useful (targeting with the cursor the youtube slider is a pain).
Maybe the alsa mixers galore will also be somewhat solved.
Otherwise, at some point PA entered Unstable of Debian and strange sound bugs started to come an go. When the strangest one came (with multiple X logins, if I changed the user, sound from the previous user was killed), I removed PA and live hapilly without sound bugs, until the a few generations sacrifice themselves and uncover all PA bugs.
The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric) Posted May 23, 2009 9:39 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Sound over the network? (I suppose you could use esd, but *that* was never
glitch-free, even in the sense of 'oops the app refuses to start with an entirely spurious esound authentication error' class of 'glitch').
The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric) Posted May 23, 2009 9:40 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Er. And you said you didn't use network sound transport and I can't read
three lines without losing one of them.
*hides head*
The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric) Posted May 23, 2009 17:00 UTC (Sat) by clarious (guest, #58753) [Link]
'Glitch free' is a little bit misleading, in fact I think it even has more glitches than pure alsa, but it does save power by lowering CPU wake up times (which is great for my laptop)
The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric) Posted May 25, 2009 15:58 UTC (Mon) by gbutler69 (guest, #54063) [Link]
Ummm....I don't know, I think he said something about power consumption, 1s timer ticks, etc?
The Sound of Fedora 11 (MadRhetoric) Posted Jun 12, 2009 13:00 UTC (Fri) by gdamjan (guest, #33634) [Link]
I've been using pulseaudio (as a system service BTW) on ArchLinux ... and the 0.9.15 release seems to behave very good.
I think .10-.14 were the problematic releases and those crept in a lot of distros but now PA seems to work fine.
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