[pulseaudio-discuss] Pulseaudio as a systemwide deamon and as the default ALSA plugin doesn't seem to work right.... ?

[Lennart Poettering]

On Thu, 15.11.07 11:59, Kevin Williams (kevkim55 at gmail.com) wrote:

> 
> On November 15, 2007 06:17:07 am Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> > This sounds like a message coming from xine, or at least it is quite
> > similar from the xine message expressing the same problem. If this is
> > the case, make sure that you're not using hw:0 as device in the xine
> > configuration; ideally you should be using the PulseAudio output
> > directly (although I know already that the version shipped with 1.1
> > isn't all that good, nor is 1.2 version perfect; I'm working on it).
> 
> I do get similar messages from the audio apps like mplayer, avidemux, rezound 
> etc. Repeatedly clicking on the play button (which triggers the same message 
> box every time the play/next/previous button is pressed) a few times makes it 
> work. Sometimes, relaunching the app is the only way to get it working.
> 
> As far as xine configuration is concerned, I've configured "auto" for both 
> audio and video and "default" for audio device. I've also tried specifying 
> alsa and pulseaudio plugin as the output but, to no avail. I get the similar 
> messages about the audio device not being available.

My educated guess is that some of your apps use PA natively, others
don't but hardcode are configured to use the raw ALSA devices, or raw
OSS devices. Now, PA closes all devices after a short time of
idle. So, what might happen to you is that you first use a native
app. That causes PA top open the device. If you then use a non-native
app, then it won't work.  But after the idleness timeout it will
suddenly and magically start to work, because PA closed the devices.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net         ICQ# 11060553
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