[pulseaudio-discuss] Optimize PA for mobile usage

[Baek Chang]

"module-suspend-on-idle" should suspend the alsa devices when no clients are
idle or not connected for 5 seconds by default.
try loading that module and see if it actually closes the handle to the alsa
devices.

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Paul Menzel <
paulepanter at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Dear Andreas,
>
>
> Am Freitag, den 07.10.2011, 17:03 +0200 schrieb Andreas Bauer:
>
> > First a big thank you for a quality piece of software. I am a first
> > time user and am amazed at the flexiblity that PA provides. I
> > installed PA because I wanted to have better integration of my
> > Bluetooth headset and works perfectly.
>
> thank you for such positive feed back. I guess developers (not me)
> should get that more often.
>
> > Running Debian Squeeze (stable) with Kernel 3.0.1
>
> Is the PA version 0.9.21-3+squeeze1 [1]? I guess the ALSA version is
> quite old then too. PA 1.0 was released recently.
>
> Could you somehow test a more recent version. I am not sure if there is
> a live CD for that purpose or if you have a spare storage medium where
> you can try Debian Sid/unstable.
>
> > Now I have three issues which I hope someone can point me to a
> > possible solution.
> >
> > On my Lenovo X201 laptop with Intel HDA I do see a heavy increase in
> > power consumption when I activate pulseaudio. The system is already
> > optimised so without pulseaudio it will idle at 6-9W with wifi on,
> > with pulseaudio started it will jump to 13W. No pulseaudio client
> > connected (no sound played)
> >
> > Averaged battery reading every 5s
> >
> > 1267000
> > 1311000
> > 1330000
> > 1347000 <- here pa-suspender is started
> > 1192000
> > 1091000
> > 986000
> > 952000
> > 943000
> > 988000
> > 970000
> > 943000
> >
> > I have already optimised the PA setup for my needs (e.g. low quality
> > resampling-method), so I investigated further:
> >
> > From top:
> >
> > 8816 ab         9 -11  211m 3832 2832 S    0  0.1   0:00.06 pulseaudio
> >
> > From powertop:
> >
> >            695,7 µs/s      13,6
> > Process        /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
> >
> > So it is not about CPU consumption, pulseaudio is economical with CPU
> > as is.
> >
> > The same thing (also drawing about the same amount of extra juice)
> > happens with this:
> >
> > root at charly:~# mv /etc/asound.conf /etc/asound.pulse
> > root at charly:~# aplay -d front /boot/vmlinuz-*
> > Wiedergabe: Rohdaten '/boot/vmlinuz-3.0.1' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate:
> > 8000 Hz, mono
> >
> > So clearly, it is the power consumption of the sound chip. I suspect
> > that pulseaudio activates the sound chip even when no sound is being
> > played. Is there any way to have it only access the hardware when at
> > minimum one client is connected (e.g. audio playing)?
>
> I am not sure. 4 W power consumption of a sound chip sounds quite a lot
> to me. Additionally as written above please try a newer version.
>
> > I was not successful with this shot (old syntax?):
> >
> > add-autoload-sink alsa_sink module-alsa-sink device="hw:0"
> > add-autoload-source alsa_source module-alsa-source device="hw:0"
>
> You can also take a look at the ALSA Wiki [2] and provide the output of
> `alsa-info.sh` which should give a lot of useful information to the
> developers.
>
> > Second issue: I have one application (Zoiper) which can only access
> > ALSA at the moment (because it will not allow me to input non-hardware
> > ALSA device names like pcm.pulse). Is there some hack/workaround to
> > get such applications to talk to pulseaudio?
>
> Please open a new thread by sending a new message with an appropriate
> subject line for this topic.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul
>
>
> [1] http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/pulseaudio
> [2] http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Help_To_Debug
>
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>
>


-- 
-baeksanchang
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