[pulseaudio-discuss] Networking and volume control
Matt Feifarek
matt.feifarek at gmail.com
Fri Nov 6 19:09:52 UTC 2020
Perhaps this might help: when you set the PULSE_SERVER env variable, all
the commands you run will be run against the Rpi, basically going around
the local machine configuration. That's why you're seeing different sink
configurations when you do pactl... it's effectively the same as you
logging into the pi, and running pactl there.
The second dump shows the pi in as a tunnel sink seen from your PC's PA
context, which is what you want.
I don't use pavucontrol, but I don't know of any reason why it can't
control a sink that is in actuality a remote/tunnel sink, and the fact that
the volumes are listed there in the second dump means I might be right.
Have you tried doing this on your workstation box?
pactl set-default-sink tunnel.dietpi-music.local.alsa_output.default
And then doing things will by default (but not exclusively) happen on the
sink on the pi. But you can still tell other apps to use other sinks. Be
careful that this is what you want, of course, because you probably don't
want your UI stuff to beep on the Pi. It might be better to just
specifically force the things you want (music player?) to the sink you want.
One thing to note is that once you have things pretty well setup, PA does
try and restore things as they last were... so if you manually set one app
to send to the tunnel, I think PA will try and preserve that as the app and
the sink come and go.
You can also write little script shims, if you follow me, that are little
3-4 line scripts to do things like volume and mute and stuff by setting the
server and running the command there. I should think that these could be
little GUI-aware shims, too, making .desktop files (or the equivalent), so
when you run one, it sets up the environment for you and connects to the
right sink.
For whatever it's worth, I too am using a rPi on a hifi system that is
remote from my work-a-day computer. I don't manage the volumes at all,
leaving that to the audio gear, but I have a somewhat complex setup that is
in two rooms with sync'd playback across several devices that has been
borne of years of trial and error with pactl. I'm using mpd, librespot,
shairport-sync, and have a Chromecast hooked up to one box to "stream" from
one soundcard as a source to another as a sink. And FWIW, I ignored the
advice and ran PA on the Pi in System mode. I don't know that the priority
stuff matters for something like usb audio, which shouldn't tax the system
very much. Anyway, if you want to ask me more about my setup, feel free
here or off-list.
On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 10:45 AM Matt Garman <matthew.garman at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I posted about this earlier, but now am facing a different problem.
> Recap from original post:
>
> I have PulseAudio set up on a Raspberry Pi as a sound server. The RPi
> is connected to a USB DAC, which has hardware volume control
> capabilities. This is what I have in my /etc/pulse/default.pa:
>
> load-module module-alsa-sink control='D70 '
>
> Note: I am deliberately NOT loading module-udev-detect, otherwise
> PulseAudio reverts to software volume control. (The device is a
> Topping D70, and the space between the zero and the quote above is
> deliberate.)
>
> Now, on the client, if I do this:
>
> # PULSE_SERVER=rpi_server_hostname pavucontrol
>
> Everything works as expected. That is, I have an output device
> ("D70") whose hardware volume I can control with pavucontrol. So I
> went ahead and put "default-server = rpi_server_hostname" in my
> ~/.pulse/client.conf. Then all my apps route sound to the RPi.
>
> But then I realized that config makes the RPi the *only* sound device
> I can use on my PC. Sometimes I plug in other devices (e.g. webcam,
> headphones) directly to the PC, and those get ignored with the
> "default-server" config in place.
>
> So it looks like one solution is to remove the "default-server" config
> on the client, and use zeroconf/avahi so that the client can
> automatically discover the RPi server as another output device, and
> co-exist with local devices.
>
> I set this up, basically by loading the "module-zeroconf-discover" on
> the client PC, loading "module-zeroconf-publish" on the RPi server,
> and running the avahi daemon on the server. With this in place, I do
> see the RPi server showing up as an output device on my PC. However,
> it doesn't work: I can't get any sound to come from it. Furthermore,
> the volume control doesn't have any effect either. (I can play sounds
> via MPD running locally on the RPI server. I can adjust the volume in
> an MPD client. I can adjust volume from my PC using pavucontrol only
> when using PULSE_SERVER or default-server, but not with the zeroconf
> config I'm trying to get working.)
>
> My suspicion is the zeroconf is only working enough to advertise the
> device as available, but not advertising enough info to actually make
> the device usable.
>
> My other thought is that, given how I had to explicitly configure the
> control on the server side, maybe I need to do a similar explicit
> config on the client side?
>
> I don't know if this helps, but maybe it offers a clue: on the client
> PC, running "pactl list sinks" with and without being prefixed by
> PULSE_SERVER:
>
> $ PULSE_SERVER=dietpi-music pactl list sinks
> Sink #0
> State: RUNNING
> Name: alsa_output.default
> Description: D70
> Driver: module-alsa-sink.c
> Sample Specification: s32le 2ch 44100Hz
> Channel Map: front-left,front-right
> Owner Module: 5
> Mute: no
> Volume: front-left: 5727 / 9% / -63.51 dB, front-right:
> 5727 / 9% / -63.51 dB
> balance 0.00
> Base Volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
> Monitor Source: alsa_output.default.monitor
> Latency: 22567 usec, configured 24988 usec
> Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY
> Properties:
> alsa.resolution_bits = "32"
> device.api = "alsa"
> device.class = "sound"
> alsa.class = "generic"
> alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
> alsa.name = "USB Audio"
> alsa.id = "USB Audio"
> alsa.subdevice = "0"
> alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
> alsa.device = "0"
> alsa.card = "1"
> alsa.card_name = "D70"
> alsa.long_card_name = "Topping D70 at
> usb-0000:01:00.0-1.2, high speed"
> alsa.driver_name = "snd_usb_audio"
> device.bus_path =
> "platform-fd500000.pcie-pci-0000:01:00.0-usb-0:1.2:1.0"
> sysfs.path =
>
> "/devices/platform/scb/fd500000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0/0000:01:00.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2:1.0/sound/card1"
> udev.id = "usb-Topping_D70-00"
> device.bus = "usb"
> device.vendor.id = "152a"
> device.vendor.name = "Thesycon Systemsoftware &
> Consulting GmbH"
> device.product.id = "8750"
> device.product.name = "D70"
> device.serial = "Topping_D70"
> device.string = "default"
> device.buffering.buffer_size = "705600"
> device.buffering.fragment_size = "352800"
> device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
> device.description = "D70"
> alsa.mixer_name = "USB Mixer"
> alsa.components = "USB152a:8750"
> device.icon_name = "audio-card-usb"
> Formats:
> pcm
>
>
> Versus running without the PULSE_SERVER environment:
>
> $ pactl list sinks
> Sink #0
> (snipped for brevity - my HDMI monitor, which has sound output
> capabilities)
>
> Sink #1
> State: SUSPENDED
> Name: tunnel.dietpi-music.local.alsa_output.default
> Description: D70 on root at dietpi-music
> Driver: module-tunnel.c
> Sample Specification: s32le 2ch 44100Hz
> Channel Map: front-left,front-right
> Owner Module: 26
> Mute: no
> Volume: front-left: 7575 / 12%, front-right: 7575 / 12%
> balance 0.00
> Base Volume: 65536 / 100%
> Monitor Source:
> tunnel.dietpi-music.local.alsa_output.default.monitor
> Latency: 0 usec, configured 0 usec
> Flags: NETWORK HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL LATENCY
> Properties:
> device.description = "D70 on root at dietpi-music"
> tunnel.remote.server = "[10.18.51.63]:4713"
> tunnel.remote.sink = "alsa_output.default"
> device.icon_name = "computer"
> tunnel.remote_version = "32"
> tunnel.remote.user = "root"
> tunnel.remote.fqdn = "dietpi-music"
> tunnel.remote.description = "D70"
> Formats:
> pcm
>
>
> Thank you for any help or hints!
> _______________________________________________
> pulseaudio-discuss mailing list
> pulseaudio-discuss at lists.freedesktop.org
> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-discuss
>
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