Any alternatives to PulseAudio?

[wvxvw]

Hello,

Is there anything I can do to:

1. Entirely remove every reference to PulseAudio from the system, but still have something (ALSA?) to play sounds?

2. Is there any substitute? All my efforts to try to read the documentation on PulseAudio put me nowhere - I fail to understand why this component is at all needed, it only increases the level of complexity of user experience manyfold.

So, is there any way to get rid of it? I'm so tired of it failing randomly and me having to restart the system to be able to listen to a lecture online. My setup is extremely basic - all I have is an on-board Intell audio card and the headset - and that is it, no speakers, no advanced audio cards, nothing... and I'm being given over 20 options (devices) to choose from in a setup - none of them having any meaningful name or parameters. Sorry to say, but a more bullcrap program of such scale I have not met in years

I'm open to any suggestions, experimental, untested, even if I have to patch its source code to make it work. I just so much tired of this crap, I have no words to explain it.

TIA

[Ericg]

WVXVW can we get some information about your setup? Are you running Gnome? KDE? XCFE? LXDE?

To answer your 2 questions though here we go:

1) Yes, you can (in theory) remove all traces of PulseAudio and stick to a standard Alsa or OSS setup. Some apps may have a pulseaudio dependency however in which case you'd either have to remove those as well, force remove pulseaudio and hope that the apps in question have an alsa fallback mode, recompile them without a PulseAudio dependecy, or somehow trick them into thinking they are using pulse but are actually bypassing it and going straight to alsa or OSS

2) PulseAudio got created for a few reasons. (Since you seem to be okay with patching source, i wont leave out the technical details)

2-1) At the time Alsa's mixer (dmix) was either complete crap, or didnt exist at all. So only one application could play sound at any given time, you couldnt have system sounds and flash going at the same time. One of them would get a lock to the sound card and it would have that lock until it was done playing sound. Pulseaudio IS a mixer, therefore it could do multiple apps.

2-2) Alsa can't do Headphone detection. The entire nature of Alsa's design prevents it from knowing when a headphone jack is plugged. I have ZERO idea how the developers missed that usecase...but they did. Before you had to pull up alsamixer, mute your speakers, unmute the headphones and probably turn their volume up when you wanted to listen to music but not have it blasting. With PulseAudio (now, you need 2.0 I think) you can just plug in a pair of headphones and youre good to go.)

2-3) Networked sound. Everyone seems to love X's Network Transparency for applications, well PulseAudio allows network-transparent audio, and can even discover servers/clients using Avahi.

2-4) Per App sound control. This was originally entitled volume control, but Pulse lets you control the entire sound. Say you've got a Skype call going but you want to listen to music too. With Alsa both applications are at the same system volume (the music app may have its own volume control, but we're talking about system volume). With Pulse you can set Skype to be at 100% and your music player to be at 50% right from the notification area. Pulse can also send streams through different hardware devices. Not all applications support sending their audio over different sound cards, Dragon Player for example doesn't. So if I'm showing a movie on my TV via my laptop over HDMI, with just Alsa the movie may play over HDMI but sound wont because Dragon Player cant send it over a different stream because Dragon Player's in charge. With Pulse, Pulse is in charge. Dragon Player sends its audio wherever PULSE tells it to. And in that case I want Dragon Player's audio to go out over HDMI.

I'm sure Pulse has some more benefits that I cant think of, but there's just a few examples using my personal experiences and what ive done with PulseAudio.


Back to your problem however-- can you tell us anything else? I really would like to get your problem sorted out. I was an "Alsa-only" guy for awhile too but PulseAudio got their act together and now its one of the first things I install when I install Arch.

[sonoran]

Originally Posted by wvxvw

2. Is there any substitute?

I use ossv4 in Fedora 17. http://www.opensound.com
The Download page mentions a license key, but I've never seen any evidence of it.

To disable pulseaudio uninstall alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.

The only issue I've encountered with this setup is that Fedora's audacious-plugins package excludes the oss4 output plugin. To use audacious you have to compile the upstream output-plugins source.

[wvxvw]

OK, sorry, was just too frustrated about it.
I'm using KDE4.
I actually managed to uninstall it, though couple of things stopped working: no sound in Wine applications, and no sound in HTML video (only Flash or GoogleTalk plugin can play sounds).

Re' not being able to play sounds from multiple sources - I was never able to do that with PulseAudio too, (for example, running an application in Wine would disable all sounds from other sources etc. So while this is not good, it's not getting worse for me... technically

I don't have speakers - I only have the line out, where the headphones are connected (headset to be precise, but if the microphone doesn't function - it's not important), and even this basic setup didn't work with PulseAudio

Can you give a link to some description of what is Networked sound? I don't know what that is...

That other functionality of controling volume on system level is the most redundand feature I could think of. Any non-trivial application that can play sounds provides some way of controlling the volume of the sound. Having two controls (the other being also difficult to discover) is a bad thing, not a bonus.
And, again, my use case is extremely basic - I don't need any of those things you describe, and unlikely to need them in the next couple of years...

More precise description, well, I'll try my best.

Using PulseAudion in principle never worked for Skype (but I don't use it much, so that's not a big problem). In order to use Skype I had to stop and disable respawn of PulseAudio server, log off - log on and reconfigure Skype to use ALSA.
I've tried PulseAudio with different versions of Flash plugin, both in Netscape API and Pepper API versions, and tried downgrading etc, with mixed, but never good results. There would be either no audio, or a very poor quality chopped / noisy output.
HTML video (and new video on Youtube tends to be HTML-only) never played sounds.
I had Wine crashing because of PulseAudio stopped working while it was playing sounds.
I don't use Dragon player, but once or twice I tried, it didn't play audio too. But VLC plays it fine, so that's not a problem.

When I looked in the dmesg log, there were no errors related to sound, pulseaudio reported finding devices on startup and that's it...
I would usually discover that PulseAudio quit by trying to restart it, because the playback failed, and seeing there's no pulseaudio process.

[flyingfsck]

It sounds like your Linux system is several years old. Pulse hasn't given me these issues in the last 3 years or more.

[wvxvw]

Nope, it's FC-17, installed two months or so ago, kernel version 3.5.2 iirc. I ran yum update, perhaps even twice after installing, so it's all new and shiny. I can't tell, unfortunately, what version of PulseAudio was that.

[DBelton]

Originally Posted by Ericg

2-2) Alsa can't do Headphone detection. The entire nature of Alsa's design prevents it from knowing when a headphone jack is plugged. I have ZERO idea how the developers missed that usecase...but they did. Before you had to pull up alsamixer, mute your speakers, unmute the headphones and probably turn their volume up when you wanted to listen to music but not have it blasting. With PulseAudio (now, you need 2.0 I think) you can just plug in a pair of headphones and youre good to go.)

That is interesting.

I have always had to change the settings for my headphone detection in alsa. There is a automute switch in alsa that I had to change to keep it from muting my speakers when the headphones are plugged in. Once I changed the setting in alsa, then pulseaudio used the setting, but until then, it automuted the speakers when I plugged in the headphones. Pulseaudio just uses the alsa setting. It doesn't have any setting in pulseaudio for the headphone detection.

[CronoCloud]

Originally Posted by Ericg

With PulseAudio (now, you need 2.0 I think) you can just plug in a pair of headphones and youre good to go.)

Yes, but only if you have one audio "card". For example, it won't auto-route my HDMI audio to Internal Analog if I plug them in. Course, since Pulse gives me total per app control I can manually switch them over.

2-4) Per App sound control. Pulse can also send streams through different hardware devices.

Which I love, works on the fly now too. In older pulse versions, you had to switch, and restart the app to get it to switch, but now... you just switch.

Originally Posted by wvxvw

OK, sorry, was just too frustrated about it.
I'm using KDE4.

Ahh, might be KDE's sound backend, Phonon, I think it's called, messing things up.

I actually managed to uninstall it, though couple of things stopped working: no sound in Wine applications

You can have Wine use Alsa, you'll need the wine-alsa packages, though it works pretty well.."now" with pulse.

Can you give a link to some description of what is Networked sound? I don't know what that is...

It's fairly simple, if you have pulse running on two machines, you can have Pulse send sound to the pulse instance on the other machine, kind of like X11 forwarding.

I don't need any of those things you describe, and unlikely to need them in the next couple of years...

Per app control is more useful than you might think. While I don't use it often...I'm glad I have it for when I do.

Using PulseAudion in principle never worked for Skype (but I don't use it much, so that's not a big problem). In order to use Skype I had to stop and disable respawn of PulseAudio server, log off - log on and reconfigure Skype to use ALSA.

Skype and pulse should work flawlessly now, though they didn't in the past. What skype version are you using?

HTML video (and new video on Youtube tends to be HTML-only) never played sounds.

Applications will default to the pulse default output, in some cases that is NOT what you want In my case the default is analog output, but most of the time I want HDMI. So if I open up a sound using app, I have to tell it to use HDMI in Pavucontrol, which it will then do until I tell it otherwise. Check the default in pavucontrol. Specivically "Output devices" and "configuration"

Originally Posted by wvxvw

Nope, it's FC-17, installed two months or so ago, kernel version 3.5.2 iirc. I ran yum update, perhaps even twice after installing, so it's all new and shiny. I can't tell, unfortunately, what version of PulseAudio was that.

Pulse should be working like a dream for you in F17, I know, that doesn't help much, but odds are a few configuration tweaks and you'll be good to go.

CronoCloud

[wvxvw]

Well, obviously, Pusle doesn't work like a dream... more like a bad dream I'd say
And, no, I don't need to play audio from my computer on another computer and the other way around... I only have one computer anyway :| Not really something I'd invest any effort any time soon...

And, really, I can imagine a use case when I'd need two sounds playing at the same time... but this is sooooooo rare, and if I didn't have it, I wouldn't regret it. I mean, seriously, perhaps some cool kids who like to skype while the music is playing and play a game with sounds in the background might appreciate this - I have absolutely zero use for this ability. Please don't misunderstand, not bashing people who like many features - it's fine, but it's better to have a version for people who don't need these features, and then have the rest as an extension / add-on.

Also, before switching to Fedora, I was a long time Ubuntu user and about a year befor that I ran Debian as my desktop (different PCs, too) - PulseAudio was always a very bad program so long I can remember... and I mean, perhaps I remember it 4-5 years back. Some times I'd put up with it, but yesterday it got on my nevre because of having to spend an hour trying to understand what went wrong in order to listen a podcast about 15 minutes long.

Also, re' devices in my configuration - this is the major hurdle, because I have over 20 devices listed there - none even remotely resembling what I have in actuallity on my PC, some I can't figure what they are, like hw:X,Y (about 5-7 of these) and a lot of other abbreviations in caps, which I've again, no idea what that is... I can't make a connection between the hardware I have to what it shows. By trial and error - there's only one that ever worked, the rest are of no use (something-something "analog audio"). The caps being HDAATI (wtf is that? I never in my whole life had an ATI sound card - I didn't even know they make any...) - there are 10 of these alone, then there are 4 HDA Intel (some of them must be the audio card that I have), and something it calls "default" device - obviously, there's no way to know what is what.

Ah, I have Skype version 4.0.0.8. Truth be told, the only time it worked for me with PulseAudio was on 32 bit Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Linux I think), but never after that. This was about 3-4 years ago.

Oh, and if it is Phonon... ok, I'm not asking why do I need a backend for something as s/simple/complicated/ as writing a bunch of raw binary data to a port... I mean, seriosly... this is not a complex engineering task, it is made complex by bad architects and bad architecture :/ then, how do I replace / uninstall / "fix" it?

[Ericg]

Originally Posted by wvxvw

Also, before switching to Fedora, I was a long time Ubuntu user and about a year before that I ran Debian as my desktop (different PCs, too) - PulseAudio was always a very bad program so long I can remember... and I mean, perhaps I remember it 4-5 years back. Some times I'd put up with it, but yesterday it got on my never because of having to spend an hour trying to understand what went wrong in order to listen a podcast about 15 minutes long.

To be fair on the Ubuntu and Debian front... Ubuntu shipped pulse for about 2 or 3 releases that was a complete mess so there's a year and a half of that. And Debian ships massively outdated packages so using them to compare Pulse isnt really fair.

Also, re' devices in my configuration - this is the major hurdle, because I have over 20 devices listed there - none even remotely resembling what I have in actuallity on my PC, some I can't figure what they are, like hw:X,Y (about 5-7 of these) and a lot of other abbreviations in caps, which I've again, no idea what that is... I can't make a connection between the hardware I have to what it shows. By trial and error - there's only one that ever worked, the rest are of no use (something-something "analog audio"). The caps being HDAATI (wtf is that? I never in my whole life had an ATI sound card - I didn't even know they make any...) - there are 10 of these alone, then there are 4 HDA Intel (some of them must be the audio card that I have), and something it calls "default" device - obviously, there's no way to know what is what.

hw:X,Y im pretty sure is what Alsa calls devices, not Pulse. So the fact that you have 5 or 7 of them means somewhere detection is being screwed up. 'Default' is the Pulse device. Or atleast it should be.

Ah, I have Skype version 4.0.0.8. Truth be told, the only time it worked for me with PulseAudio was on 32 bit Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Linux I think), but never after that. This was about 3-4 years ago.

Skype should be working perfectly honestly... I realize that doesnt help but honestly man...you are having the strangest of problems considering what hardware/software you have. Like everything should b e working perfectly with intel audio and F17's Pulse and a modern skype version. In the past Skype had really bad problems with Pulse but those got sorted out on Skype's end.

Oh, and if it is Phonon... ok, I'm not asking why do I need a backend for something as s/simple/complicated/ as writing a bunch of raw binary data to a port... I mean, seriosly... this is not a complex engineering task, it is made complex by bad architects and bad architecture :/ then, how do I replace / uninstall / "fix" it?

Its not bad architecture, its flexible architecture. KDE has Phonon because Phonon handles multiple things. KDE, like QT, is cross-platform. Which means they can't make many assumptions about what you have available, which means abstraction. If you're on Windows you have DirectSound not Pulse/Alsa, Phonon can handle that. If you're on Mac you have (I forget its name, but its not Pulse/Alsa) KDE can handle that. If you're on linux you can have OSS, Pulse, or Alsa, or even eventually KLANG <-- Phonon can handle you having all those various backends. What about codecs? Linux has Gstreamer, xine or libVLC. Of those I think only libVLC is available on Mac and Windows but Gstreamer is the preferred. So how do you handle that? Abstract away the differences and just rely on ONE of those systems being there, doesnt matter which.

For YOU, Phonon is probably not necessary. But KDE isn't just worried about you. Its worried about all of its users, on all platforms. Hence: Abstraction.

[wvxvw]

Well, I don't want to get into debate about architecture.

I witness extremely poor results, but I cannot even diagnose / can't tell for sure who's responsible. One thing I'm certain of is that the task all these programms cumulatively try to perform isn't that complex. Also, the wellbeing of Mac users of KDE isn't very important to me... so I understand it may mean less work for KDE developers, but, with all due respect to those hard working people - is there a way to use something less abstract, simpler and that actually works on Linux, no matter how it may or may not work on other OSes?

So, sorry, I wrote a lot. Is it possible to remove / replace / fix Phonon, whatever it is?

And, I'm sure as [some warm and cozy place] it is always suprizing that something doesn't work as intended... well, unfortunately, it does! Also, googling for skype+pulseaudio brings [some warm and cozy place]-of-a-lot of results... I mean, I'm not unique at this. The first page of google search results mentions OpenSuse, Arch and other distros struggling against Skype poor cooperation with PulseAudio. And, trust me, I've been through this more then once - there are loads of wiki pages in knowledge base of every distro dedicated to this particular joint...


---------------------

Sorry, we stirred too far away from the original problem. So, here it goes. While I could uninstall PulseAudio, I still dont' have sounds in Wine (I've installed wine-alsa package). I've tried installing Windows Media Player - when I try to open an audio file in it, it crashes, and Wine with it. Trying to play sounds in Flash player crash Wine too. And that's the only thing I'm missing.

[CronoCloud]

Originally Posted by Ericg

hw:X,Y im pretty sure is what Alsa calls devices, not Pulse. So the fact that you have 5 or 7 of them means somewhere detection is being screwed up. 'Default' is the Pulse device. Or atleast it should be.

Yes, that sounds like a detection problem.

Can you show us the output of:

lspci -v | grep -i audio

and what does your /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf file contain?

CronoCloud

[wvxvw]

$ lspci -v | grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller # that's the sound card
03:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Device aab0 # that's the graphic card

I'm 100% certain my graphic card can't play sounds, unless I maybe try to vibrate it very hard :|

I don't have sound.conf file anywhere.

$ find / -type f -name "sound.conf" 2>/dev/null

returns emptyhanded.