[pulseaudio-discuss] Pulseaudio 0.16-test4 - my experience

[Maxim Levitsky]

On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 16:20 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Thu, 06.08.09 17:06, Maxim Levitsky (maximlevitsky at gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > So I carefully set everything up for it, and it now works (except 32 bit
> > compat libraries for skype )
> > 
> > Speaking of 32 bit compat libraries, is there a tutorial how to compile
> > these? (It isn't trivial, since I need alsa, pa libraries and plugins
> > for alsa)
> 
> No clue. Multilib is a desaster. If you want this at all, use what
> your distro provides you with.
Don't know, but with current 32 bit libraries skype through PA is
completely broken, I just hear a skipping sound. 

> 
> > 1 - all sounds played through libcanberra (using pulse backend) (which
> > was installed from source (everything from latest git branches), play on
> > right speaker only, and this is confirmed by pavucontrol which display
> > the volume for notify sound briefly (which I consider a bug on its own,
> > because this makes it impossible to change a stream location - clicking
> > on the stream chooser button, takes focus out of it, thus prevents
> > device list from being shown)
> > It displays "front right"
> 
> Hmm, is it possible that this is related to spacial events sounds?
> i.e. if you trigger them on the right side of the screen they are
> moved to your right speakers? If you trigger them on the left side of
> the screen they are triggered on the left side? If that's the case,
> then this is a feature, not a bug.
Doesn't seem so, everything is played on right ear, without connection
to location of button clicked.

Also, shouldn't pavuconrol not show the notify sound in playback page?
(otherwise it is impossible to change device for a stream)

> 
> Otherwise, I have never heard of this bug. If you remove
> ~/.pulse/*stream-volumes.tdb and restart PA. Does that fix the issue?
I have removed these files many times, it doesn't help at all
> 
> > 2 - flat volumes are evil. It feels like a feature being removed. Now
> > changing a volume for a stream directly affects main volume, and alsa
> > volume through it.
> > I though that one of main PA features, was a volume control per stream.
> > Could you explain me what flat volumes are (I know that turning them off
> > fixes this issue)?
> 
> The device volume is fixed to max of all the stream volumes. That's
> all.
> 
> If you have one stream at -2dB, one at -1dB and one at -3dB then the
> device volume will be fixed to -1dB. if you then scale the device
> volume this will be reflected equally on the stream volumes. If you
> change a stream volume this will only then affect the device volume if
> it is the "loudest" one which you modify.
> 
> It's actually pretty easy. 
Ah, I got it, then it is fine.
> 
> > 3 - PA sometimes dies, and it is impossible to make it log to a file,
> > other that writing a wrapper script. Wrapper script doesn't help much
> > ether, as new autostart feature, tries to launch many copies of PA, and
> > only one starts. This creates a lots of 'false positives'
> > I can disable autostart, but then, I need to write a tool to autostart
> > and restart it, maybe this is the right solution.
> > (syslog doesn't seem to be able to put an output of a daemon to a file.
> > of course I can grep the log files, but having a clean seperate log
> > files seems to be better.
> 
> Please set log-level=debug in daemon.conf and the debug output should
> end up in syslog.
I know, and don't like this, I don't like grepping it, I want to have a
seperate log file.

> 
> Which distribution is this? For tsched to work fine you need a *very*
> recent kernel (i.e. as in "not released yet") which provides a fixed
> snd_pcm_avail().
Ubunty, with 2.6.31-rc5 kernel (from git)

>  
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=506075
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501769
> 
> > And recently I did another update of alsa library, and PA.
> > Now controlling the sound via gstreamer (from gnome-volume-control, and
> > other places like applet, sound wheel) is broken, now
> > it works like that, first slider seems to work, but then it stops
> > updating the volume, untill I close and start mixer again, (or select a
> > different device from device list in gnome-volume-control, and back)
> > and it repeats
> 
> Sounds as if PA simply dies due to the mentioned snd_pcm_avail()
> problems.
No it doesn't. pulseaudio continues to work just fine, but volume slider
just doesn't change the volume.

> 
> Also note that recent g-v-c does not user Gst anymore, but connects
> directly to pa. Make sure to use that as Gst's mixer abstraction is
> uh, less than awesome.
Does it support changing alsa mixer, or only PA (I already got one for
Pa - pavucintrol)


Best regards,
	Maxim Levitsky