[pulseaudio-discuss] Pulse with a bluetooth headset

[Leszek Koltunski]

Hello Pulse gurus,

I am a long time Debian user. My current audio setup:

- 1 Soundblaster Live ( snd-emu10k1x ) hardware soundcard
- 1 bluetooth headset to with I send audio with help of the recently 
developed audio subsystem of the BlueZ stack ( more info: 
http://wiki.bluez.org/ )

here's the bluetooth-related section of my ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.headset_hw {
    type bluetooth
    device 00:07:a4:b5:7a:bb
    }

ctl.headset {
    type bluetooth
    device 00:07:a4:b5:7a:bb
    }

pcm.headset {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "headset_hw"
    }

I dont use any ESDs, jacks, artsds or OSSes - just plain ALSA with dmix.

*******************************************************************
Here are all audio related things I would like to accomplish:

1) be able to send sound from MPlayer to both sinks
   Current status: works with no problems  with 'mplayer -ao
   alsa:device=default' and  'mplayer -ao alsa:device=headset'

2) be able to send sound from Audacious to both sinks
   Current status: works, audacious can be graphically reconfigured to send
   audio either to headset virtual sndcard or default sndcard.

3) be able to send sound from FlashPlugin 9 to both sinks
   Current status: works wonderfully with 'default' ALSA sink; I dont know
   how to send audio to 'headset' ( maybe if I redefined 'default' to
   type bluetooth device 00:07:a4:b5:7a:bb in my ~/.asoundrc FlashPlugin
   would send sound there, but I haven't tried )

4) Be able to capture and send sounds from Skype to/from both the headset 
and the default
   Current status: capturing/sending audio to default works. To headset
   it does not. On Skype forums they blame bluez for this, on bluez
   forum they claim Skype's ALSA usage is incredibly weird.

5) I would also like to be able to send multiple sounds to the same 
soundcard simultanously
   Current status: lovingly works.

6) I would like to be able to dynamically change sinks, i.e. open up 
application X and be able to switch its audio sink frm headset to default 
while the application is running. I would like to be able to do this 
consistantly in the same way regardless of the application.
   Current status: doesn't work.


I don't care about Gnome system sounds, VLC, XINE or any other audio 
app.

*******************************************************************

Looks like PulseAudio can help me with the issues, especially 6). After 
reading Pulse's documentation I have the impression that simply installing 
Pulse and adding the following section to my .asoundrc

pcm.!default
  {
  type pulse
  }

ctl.!default
  {
  type pulse
  }

will retain all my existing functionality and fix issue 6). Furthermore, 
looks like PulseAudio even has a tray app from where I can dynamically 
change sinks and adjust volume levels per app.

Is that correct? Any comments?

thaks in advance,

Leszek