[pulseaudio-discuss] Soundcard with hardware mixer

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Malte Gell at 16/07/09 06:07 did gyre and gimble:
> 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. 
> 
> Currently I use a Audigy LS which has no hardware mixer. Does hwmix improve 
> latencies very much?

If you can bear to wait a little while the Skype guys are promising to 
release a new linux version that addresses PA issues very soon.

I've not followed up with the guy I'm in contact with at skype as to the 
progress, so not sure of the timings.

As Tanuk said, the h/w mixing would only be useful for apps not using 
pulse, which in an ideal world is none! So obviously this is just a 
little work around.

I'd suggest getting an super cheap extra card/usb headset and just 
dedicating it to skype and not using that card with pulse. We should 
probably add a udev property that tells pulse to ignore a given card to 
make the exclusion of a given card from autodetection that bit simpler.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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