[pulseaudio-tickets] [PulseAudio] #114: Reduce the wakeups for the audio hardware (powertop profiling)

[PulseAudio]

#114: Reduce the wakeups for the audio hardware (powertop profiling)
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  Reporter:  coling       |       Owner:  lennart
      Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new    
  Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:         
 Component:  daemon       |    Severity:  normal 
Resolution:               |    Keywords:         
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Comment (by cjvdb):

 You can decrease the interrupt rate by adjusting the fragments and
 fragement_size parameters to the module-alsa-sink/-source modules (Which
 means you have to load them manually instead of using module-hal-detect or
 module-detect). That increases latency though, so it might not be a good
 thing if you are using pulseaudio in combination with realtime audio
 applications (like voip for example). There is no other workaround for
 this at the moment because alsa doesn't allow applications to dynamically
 change fragment sizes on the fly, so pulseaudio has no option but to pick
 a default fragment_size value that works well for the most applications.

 In addition to that, unfortunately, pulseaudio causes interrupts even when
 idle because it plays silence (to avoid audio hardware popping whenever
 the device is opened). That is a known problem and AFAIK a workaround is
 on Lennart's todo list. Until that workaround is avaliable the only other
 option is to use pulseausdio's autoload feature to load/unload the
 sink/source modules on demand.

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Ticket URL: <http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/114#comment:1>
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