[pulseaudio-tickets] [Bug 47899] Stuttering when using "Simultaneous output"

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47899

--- Comment #4 from Davyd McColl <davydm at gmail.com> 2012-03-26 10:21:09 PDT ---
> The volume control app makes wakeups more frequent, which increases CPU
> consumption, so we don't want to do that when we don't have to. Now, you could
> argue that there should be some configuration option that forces small buffers,
> but what really should be done is to fix the bug so that everyone is happy
> without needing to configure anything.
I'm all for that, but would settle for a workaround, to be honest (: I'm also a
bit pedantic when I program, so trust me that I understand that such a
workaround would probably irk you or whoever worked it in -- but it's something
I would appreciate. Not to harp on, but if I knew off-hand (or with little
investigation) how to duplicate this in another application, I would have
already written a workaround app to launch alongside my session to "fix" this
(: Hacky? Sure! But scratches the itch -- for now. 

> Can you explain a bit more why you need module-combine-sink ("simultaneous
> output") to achieve this? On standard Gnome, switching between devices should
> be as simple as opening Sound Settings, selecting the Output tab and selecting
> another device. AFAIK Ubuntu doesn't use standard Gnome, but I'd expect it not
> to be very different.
The PulseAudio application to manage default sinks and the like doesn't
actually work "as expected" for me. I should probably log another bug, but what
I get is that every application is default assigned to my internal audio device
(despite setting combined as the default sink) until such time as I manually
switch that application to combined. It's much easier if everything is on
combined to just turn down the hardware knob on my speaker set if I want to use
the headphones than to open up pavucontrol (iirc that's the program?) and
switch each app over to my USB headset and back again so that when my wife uses
the computer the next day, things work "as expected" for her.
In addition, this simultaneous output feature is the one thing I wish that
would be implemented in the windows sound system, for exactly the same reason.
Instead of multiple clicks, I can just reach for the hardware knob and turn off
the speakers. I work around it in windows by having a scheduled task to switch
devices (since I want to use headphones at night) -- something I tried with PA
and, though I got the default device to switch, the setting wouldn't be applied
to all running apps -- I had to switch each individual app (fine, I worked that
one out) but the whole script just seemed flaky -- sometimes it worked,
sometimes it didn't, with the same logic, mere seconds apart. I gave up since I
program all day and just wanted to relax at night (:

> Pulseaudio log might be useful. Ubuntu provides a nice page explaining how to
> get that: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio/Log

I'll get some posted on here when I'm back in Linux -- switched to that other
OS for the moment to game (:

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