[LAU] [PlanetCCRMA] Mixer Wowes

TheOther theother1510 at sbcglobal.net
Thu May 14 22:19:02 EDT 2009


William M. Quarles wrote:
> TheOther wrote:
>>> David, or Fernando, or ANYBODY else out there, do you have any idea why 
>>> this isn't working for me? Something smells funny about Pulseaudio, but 
>>> I don't know enough about it to be able to say why.
>> Hello William,
>>
>> You can check the PlanetCCRMA archives to see my thoughts and 
>> experiences with PulseAudio.
>>
>> If you have Fedora 10 installed, remove PulseAudio.
>>
>> If you are using Fedora 7, 8, or 9, then upgrade to Fedora 10 so you 
>> can remove PulseAudio.
>>
>> Good Luck,
>> Stephen.
> 
> Sounds good to me, I don't even know what PulseAudio does other than it 
> kept Rhythmbox from working when I first installed Fedora 10 on a 
> computer. But what dependencies will I be breaking? Last time that I did 
> that, I also found like a dozen or so other applications that depended 
> on PulseAudio that my RPM database apparently didn't know about.
> 
> I'll give it a shot!
> 
> Thanks,
> William

I went from Fedora 6 (no PulseAudio) to Fedora 9 (PulseAudio).  Under 
Fedora 9, trying to remove PulseAudio also removed KDE and Gnome. 
That was unthinkable.  In Fedora 10 you can now remove PulseAudio 
without problems.

If you have Fedora 9 (and probably this will work for Fedora 7 and 8), 
enter your hardware BIOS at bootup time and disable the motherboard 
sound chip.  Leave PulseAudio installed.

In this case the PulseAudio server fails to start.  Your audio 
applications will then use ALSA, OSS, Jack, or whatever else you are 
using for sound.  For me, my problems were solved.  My PCI sound card 
was recognized as the default, and the Linux applications that are 
hard coded for the default sound device worked with my PCI sound card 
as expected.


 From this (disabling the motherboard sound chip) I inferred that 
PulseAudio was developed as a means for helping Windows users transfer 
to Linux in a painless manner.  I'm assuming PulseAudio was never 
intended to be useful for advanced Linux audio users, because it 
wasn't checking for additional sound chips/cards/devices *and* 
allowing the user to specify the order in which those sound 
chips/cards/devices would be used.  PulseAudio always defaulted to the 
motherboard sound chip, and a fair number of Linux sound applications 
always default to the default sound chip/card/device (which in the 
case of PulseAudio will be the motherboard sound chip.)  Hence, you're 
having all this trouble in trying to use a special video/audio card 
because PulseAudio and very likely your sound application are only 
trying to use your motherboard sound chip, since that is the default.

Hope this helps,
Stephen.



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