Apps cannot access working ALSA/PulseAudio devices on F8

[cbredesen]

Hello Forum,

I wasn't sure where to post this - the hardware is working but applications cannot access it, so I chose Software. Here's the issue:

I have F8 (fully updated) on my Dell D620. I use Twinkle softphone with my Plantronics USB audio device + headset. After I came to understand PulseAudio at a reasonable level, I got it all working.

Something has happened in the last day or two where now my applications (Twinkle in this case) cannot access the USB Audio device. Some other info:

- the devices both show up in system-config-soundcard and both correctly play the test sound.
- when I tap on the mic, I can hear it in the headset.
- PA volume meter shows the mic is working.

However, when Twinkle starts up, it tells me it cannot access the speaker or the mic. I'm new to PA and ALSA so I'm not sure where to go to even diagnose this. I've killed and restarted PA daemon and also rebooted the machine. Apart from the Fedora updates, nothing has changed software wise.

Hope someone can steer me toward diagnosis and resolution and I can use my softphone again. BTW, Pulse is damn cool and I hope it isn't to blame for this little snafu

Cheers & TIA,

Chris

[sargek]

I would just be happy to get Pulse Audio working at all. It does absolutely nothing and the volume control is unusable. I have been forced to completely disable Pulse and go back to Alsa, which in my opinion is not a step back. Did you have Pulse Audio working out of the box?

[BlueC]

I had similar problems in this thread and others have had problems since a pulseaudio yum update.

The solution for me was to ensure that Console-Kit and avahi-daemon is enabled on startup. See also: http://fedoraguide.info/index.php/Fedora8

HTH

[sargek]

This may seem silly, but I refuse to enable avahi-daemon for a sound server. avahi-daemon is a mDNS/DNS-SD daemon which deals with IP addresses. For the life of me, I cannot see how this has anything to do with sound. Not trying to bash Pulse Audio, but Alsa does the job quite well and unless someone can convince me a sound server needs network resources, I'm sticking with Alsa. The reason I was interested in getting Pulse Audio working is because it's broken on my system and that drives me nuts!

[BlueC]

I don't think that seems silly at all (indeed I had avahi-daemon disabled for the same reasons!). I do not really understand why f8 made the step "up" to pulseaudio when alsa worked fine alone in f7. Pulseaudio seems to be the answer to a question that nobody was asking.

[sidebrnz]

My sound works OK, except for the system sounds. I can't get it to use logon/logout sounds. And, if I tell it to use any file except the default ones, the application stops playing sounds until I restart it. When I had FC a6, sound Just Worked, now, it Just Doesn't Work. I'm beginning to think that Pulse Audio is the problem, not the answer. Who needs a sound server for a standalone machine, anyway? Does anybody know what happens if you try removing all of Pulse Audio?

[cbredesen]

My stuff is now working, so here's the update:

I'm afraid I don't have a concrete fix to give to the community, but some combination of the below did the trick. I don't recall in what order i did these things, but I did them all and my stuff now works.

- Check gstreamer-properties and discovered that the default output device was "custom". Returned this to PulseAudio.

- Restore the audio config files using system-config-souncard (System > [Restore configuration files]). After doing this I had to again un-mute my mic and set it as the default input. Mics are apparently muted by default (makes sense).

- rm ~/.pulse/volume-restore.table

In doing all this, I discovered that what was happening was that Twinkle's ring (incoming) was conflicting with the audio of my newly-answered call. This is why I could make a call but could not receive one. I think what really fixed this was the removal of pulse config in my home directory (last bullet above).

Another word about PulseAudio: I loaded F8 from the LiveImage and it installed PA but none of the PA utilities. Make sure to visit http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/AboutPulseAudio#Features and install all the *Related Software*. This makes PA from something of an anomaly into something you can use/tweak.

Thanks to all who responded.

-Chris

[sidebrnz]

Tried everything relevant to my issue, but no change. Not only that, some sounds play, others don't, including logon/logout, even if I don't mess with them. This is one reason I marked that poll about FC 6/8 that 6 was better: sound Just Worked before Pulesaudio was included.