[pulseaudio-discuss] multiroom audio setup

[Russell Strong]

Hi,

Just a bit of background first.

I've just rewired my house and in doing so I've put in 8 ceiling 
speakers.  2 in the bedroom. 2 in the dining room and 4 in the lounge 
room.  These are connected to 2 car amplifiers ( 4 channels each ) and 
then into two Audigy sound cards in my server.  I plan on using 
rhythmbox, running on my laptop, to pipe sound into which ever room I'm 
in.  Also watch movies in the lounge, again using the laptop and a flat 
panel display, or perhaps later a home theatre PC.

So currently I'm learning how to set up pulse audio and ALSA.  It taken 
some persistance but I think I'm starting to understand.  I'm using the 
following configuration and have run into a few problems ( see below ):

#!/usr/local/bin/pulseaudio -nF

.fail

load-module module-alsa-sink sink_name=lounge 
device=surround40:CARD=CA0106_1 channels=4
load-module module-alsa-sink sink_name=dining device=front:CARD=CA0106
load-module module-alsa-sink sink_name=bedroom device=rear:CARD=CA0106

load-module module-native-protocol-unix
load-module module-native-protocol-tcp 
auth-ip-acl=192.168.42.10;192.168.42.3
load-module module-zeroconf-publish

load-module module-volume-restore
#load-module module-default-device-restore
load-module module-rescue-streams
load-module module-suspend-on-idle


The first problem is with moving streams.  Whenever rhythmbox changes to 
the next track.  The new track moves back to the default location.  I 
suspect rhythmbox is closing and reopening it's connection?  Any sugestions?

The second problem is glitchy playback when I run rhythmbox on my laptop 
( over wifi ).  Are there some buffering options I could try?  Ping 
times appear well behaved, so I'm not sure what is going on here
28 packets transmitted, 28 received, 0% packet loss, time 27462ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.225/2.455/3.358/0.254 ms

A third problem.  When compiling 0.9.10, the configure script didn't 
detect that I didn't have libtool-ltdl-devel (that's what F9 calls it) 
installed.

A fourth thing I'm trying to work out is how to give the output devices 
nice names in pavucontrol et. al.  As you can see from my config, I've 
tried sink_name.

Fifth, I'm seeing this output from pulseaudio.  However, I'm not sure 
how to create a control device.  Also, could the absence of a control 
device be responsible for my glitchy playback over wifi?
W: alsa-util.c: Device (null) doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL 
surround40:CARD=CA0106_1
W: alsa-util.c: Device (null) doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL front:CARD=CA0106
W: alsa-util.c: Device (null) doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL rear:CARD=CA0106


Thanks,
Russell