[pulseaudio-discuss] Make discoverable PA network sound devices available locally results in huge network traffic

[Maarten Bosmans]

2011/1/22 Colin Guthrie <gmane at colin.guthr.ie>:
> 'Twas brillig, and Maarten Bosmans at 22/01/11 10:11 did gyre and gimble:
>> It turns out that (without pavucontrol loaded) starting an audio
>> stream on the client on the tunnel sink, makes the audio stream over
>> the network and stopping the program that is playing the music stop
>> the network usage again. So far so good, nothing unexpected. When
>> pavucontrol is opened, there is still no network usage. After playing
>> audio and then stopping the playback, the network usage does not stop,
>> however, until alsa pavucontrol is closed.
>>
>> So it seems that the source ouput of pavucontrol on the tunnel sink
>> monitor keeps the sink from suspending. (but only when the sink had
>> been running before, so the transition running -> idle is prevented)
>
> Very interesting. I wonder if it relates to the use or implementation of
> the DONT_INHIBIT_AUTO_SUSPEND flag... looking at the pavucontrol code,
> it seems it doesn't actually even pass
> PA_STREAM_DONT_INHIBIT_AUTO_SUSPEND, so perhaps the solution is really
> simple... just add that flag (although perhaps we'd have to deal with it
> a bit more intelligently).

Yup, adding that flag does the trick, see attached patch. Thanks for
the pointer.
I couldn't resist removing some duplicate code, I hope that's OK. If
not, I'll prepare a patch which only adds the flag.

> I actually wonder if this is the cause of the vumeters sometimes not
> initialising properly at times... (I presume other people see this
> occasionally? It's never quite bothered me enough to look into it properly!)

Well, I was pleasantly surprised to see that pavucontrol from git
master worked a lot better than the version packaged on Ubuntu
(0.9.9). I'll use the newest version for a while and look out for
little problems like you described.

> Col

Maarten
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