[pulseaudio-discuss] Switching Between Bitstream and PCM

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Mon, 2017-07-17 at 15:24 -0700, Henk Visser wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> 
> 1.) I playing videos with the VLC player and am using the "PulseAudio Sound
> Server" as an audio output device from the VLC GUI.
> 
> 2.) Using the "PulseAudio Sound Server" output device from within VLC, I am
> able to play a file and I get bitstream (surround sound) coming out via
> HDMI to my TV.
> 
> 3.) While this is playing (bitstream) I want to which over to PCM. How do I
> do this now? I don't see any settings for the Pulse Audio Server that stand
> out to me. Shouldn't this be toggled by the player (VLC?) or PulseAudio?
> The developers for VLC are mentioning PulseAudio to do this but I am stuck.

It would be interesting to know why you want to switch to PCM in the
middle of playback. The use case isn't obvious to me.

If you want VLC to keep playing to HDMI using PCM, then VLC needs to
restart its stream with different parameters. PulseAudio can't force it
to do that.

-- 
Tanu

https://www.patreon.com/tanuk