[pulseaudio-discuss] "ringing" sound from ekiga received as many samples

[Andrea]

Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> > I've changed my ekiga configuration to send it's "ringing" (i.e. sounds
> > like a telephone ringing) sound to ALSA via the Default device rather
> > than naming the device specifically.  Since I have the:
> >
> > pcm.pulse {
> >     type pulse
> > }
> >
> > ctl.pulse {
> >     type pulse
> > }
> >
> > .asoundrc stuff configured, ekiga's audio comes through the pulseaudio
> > server now.  Which is a good thing.  What is strange is the way the
> > audio comes.  Here's a snippet from pulseaudio -vvvv:
> >
> >
> > and those last 7 lines repeat many many times.  The actual sound is very
> > ill sounding.  Like a sick phone.   :-)
> >
> > I suspect this is an ekiga problem, but I wanted to go to their
> > list/bug-tracker with a good definition of what exactly the problem is.
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > b.

Hi,

I am an Ekiga user who is trying to fix the issue when Ekiga runs vis alsa-pulse plugin.
The first and most evident problem is the ring tone which sounds very bad.
The reason is that there are many underrun.
I attach here 2 debug outputs I've created comparing ekiga running directly to alsa (using
pasuspender) or via alsa-pulse-alsa.
The direct playback is perfect, the latter is very poor.

I've used the 2 alsa calls to populate the log

1) snd_pcm_dump at the beginning
2) snd_pcm_status_dump after each write

The first part is the same, but the status after each write is different

DIRECT

About to write 1764 len bytes
  state       : RUNNING
  trigger_time: 9762.542972003	<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  tstamp      : 9762.543004130  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  delay       : 430		<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  avail       : 1334
  avail_max   : 1334

PULSE

About to write 1764 len bytes
  state       : RUNNING
  trigger_time: 1235218239.552437000	<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  tstamp      : 0.000000		<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  delay       : 0			<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  avail       : 441
  avail_max   : 1764


And then every now and then when running via pulse ekiga generates an underrun

About to write 1764 len bytes
  state       : RUNNING
  trigger_time: 1235218239.552437000
  tstamp      : 0.000000
  delay       : 0
  avail       : 0
  avail_max   : 1764
#######################################################################  EPIPE
  state       : XRUN
  trigger_time: 1235218239.552437000
  tstamp      : 0.000000
  delay       : 0
  avail       : 0
  avail_max   : 1764


The questions I have are:

1) trigger_time and tstamp don't seem to be populated correctly when pulse-alsa is used. Is that
expected?
2) Is the alsa-pulse-alsa layer more likely to cause underruns? Is there an indicative measure
compared to the direct access?
3) Could you please rephrase what you have found. What do you mean as "many samples"?

Nobody seems to have a clear idea whether this is an issue in pulse, ekiga, the way ekiga uses alsa.

Thanks

Andrea
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