[pulseaudio-discuss] No source (typo, should be sound) from pulseaudio.. alsa is working fine though..

[Colin Guthrie]

Hi Shawn,

'Twas brillig, and Shawn Ferris at 30/01/12 06:43 did gyre and gimble:
>> Hi All --
>>
>> I hope someone can help me. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was
>> having trouble getting audio from pulseaudio on my pandaboard. Since
>> then, some bugs and work arounds have been discovered and now, I'm
>> fairly confident that alsa is behaving correctly, and pulseaudio is
>> starting without problems.. however, I still can't hear almost
>> anything..
>>
>> These work:
>> aplay Noise.wav
>> aplay -D plughw:0,0 Noise.wav


In the first case, is the sound going via PA or straight to dmix or
similar? Typical configurations of PA will set the 'default' alsa device
to the PulseAudio plugin for ALSA.

>> These don't: (they seem to, just don't hear anything)
>> paplay Noise.wav
>> paplay --device='alsa_output.platform-soc-audio.default-mapping-output'
>> --volume=65537 Noise.wav

When you run that command (and it's "playing"), can you paste the output
of "pacmd ls"? This might offer some clues.

>> Here's the screwy part.. this does work:
>> gst-launch audiotestsrc ! audioconvert ! pulsesink
>> device='alsa_output.platform-soc-audio.default-mapping-output'
>>
>> If I hear the audiotestsrc, shouldn't I be able to hear the others?

Hmm, yeah I would have thought so...

>> Here's the output of pa when using paplay:
>>
>>
>> I: [pulseaudio] client.c: Created 0 "Native client (UNIX socket client)"
>> I: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Got credentials: uid=500 gid=500 success=1
>> I: [pulseaudio] module-stream-restore.c: Restoring volume for sink
>> input sink-input-by-application-name:pacat.
>> I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Trying resume...
>> I: [alsa-sink] alsa-util.c: Trying to disable ALSA period wakeups,
>> using timers only
>> I: [alsa-sink] alsa-util.c: ALSA period wakeups disabled
>> I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Resumed successfully...
>> I: [alsa-sink] alsa-sink.c: Starting playback.
>> I: [pulseaudio] remap.c: Using mono to stereo remapping
>> I: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Using resampler 'speex-float-3'
>> I: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Using float32le as working format.
>> I: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Choosing speex quality setting 3.

Is this perhaps the problem? Does speex-float-3 work on your board?
Perhaps the gst autotestsrc does not require resampling and thus works,
but this source does and thus does not work?

Perhaps try using a fixed resampler in your daemon.conf file to test if
it's a float vs. fixed problem?

>> No blatant errors that I see.. and I think the volumes are correct and
>> not muted:
>>
>>    index: 1
>> 	name: <alsa_output.platform-soc-audio.default-mapping-output>
>> 	driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
>> 	flags: HARDWARE DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY FLAT_VOLUME DYNAMIC_LATENCY
>> 	state: SUSPENDED
>> 	suspend cause: IDLE
>> 	priority: 9000
>> 	volume: 0: 100% 1: 100%
>> 	        0: 0.00 dB 1: 0.00 dB
>> 	        balance 0.00
>> 	base volume: 100%
>> 	             0.00 dB
>> 	volume steps: 65537
>> 	muted: no

So this is the sink volume + mute status, what about the stream itself?
It can also have a volume + mute too, so worth checking there as well.

>> Anyone have any suggestions? at first, I didn't have the
>> pulse/pulse-access user/groups set up.. are those still required when
>> running under an unprivileged user account. (adding then neither
>> helped nor hurt that I could tell) and lastly, I've tried with and
>> without the linaro ucm tarball.

Yeah the "pulse" user is only used when running a system-wide instance.
Ditto for the "pulse-access" group. When running under an unprivileged
user account, they have no meaning. And you'd certainly know if you
needed them as you wouldn't even be able to connect to the daemon to get
any debug or other info, let alone play audio!


>> (https://launchpad.net/linaro-multimedia-ucm) I've got what I believe
>> is a working ucm configuration for alsa, but pa errors trying to load
>> the verbs so I've moved the ucm configuration out of the way.. have
>> the ucm changes been committed to pa?

UCM stuff is still in flux. Arun looked at it a bit recently for his
work on an Android port of PA, so hopefully we'll be able to get some
progress on UCM soon.

Col


-- 

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

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