[pulseaudio-discuss] Soundcard with hardware mixer

[Tanu Kaskinen]

to, 2009-07-16 kello 07:07 +0200, Malte Gell kirjoitti:
> Hello!
> 
> I run pulseaudio 0.9.14 with KDE 4.3 RC2. So far it runs fine. I just wonder, 
> would I benefit from a soundcard with hardware mixer? I could get a cheap 
> Audigy 2 ZS.
> 
> When I run Skype and listen to MP3 radio stream, the MP3 stream is fine, but 
> Skype often is a bit stumbling.

Is Skype alright if you don't listen to the radio stream? Maybe the
Skype connection doesn't get all packets through? (I would expect that
Skype uses a low-latency but unreliable UDP stream, while the radio
stream is a more reliable TCP stream.) What if you play local files
while using Skype?

> Currently I use a Audigy LS which has no hardware mixer. Does hwmix improve 
> latencies very much?

I don't know. Pulseaudio doesn't use hw mixing even if it's available.
But hw mixing should allow you to run Skype and Pulseaudio side by side
so that Skype doesn't go through Pulseaudio. I can imagine that there
could be some advantage of a setup like that, but no idea how
significant the advantage would be. But if this is a networking issue,
hw mixing won't help a bit.

-- 
Tanu Kaskinen