[LAU] pulseaudio issues [was Re: jackdbus issues: a workaround ? (Was: more jack/qjackctl madness)]

[Patrick Shirkey]

Sorry, I'm hijacking this thread.


Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Danni Coy <danni.coy at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I imagine that other
>> distros are similar.
>>     
>
> Certainly not something like PlanetCCRMA and on Gentoo we have the
> whole Pro-Audio overlay which supports all this stuff. Is your comment
> more about Ubuntu proper. It cannot be about the music oriented
> distros based on Ubunt, can it?
>
>   

I haven't had any problem with jackd on fedora. I haven't even seen a 
jackdbus version on Fedora 10.

I have got a problem with pulseaudio and jack not playing together. More 
importantly I have got a problem with pulseaudio being the default sound 
server and not having automated functionality to connect with jack. If 
after 10 years of running Linux audio, I have issues with getting 
pulseaudio to play nicely then pulseaudio is failing to meet it's main 
objective of making things easy for desktop users.

I would really like to encourage the pulseaudio people who are reading 
here to make pulse gracefully and automatically cede control to jack and 
then auto configure itself as a jack interface.

This feature would save alot of people alot of hassles and would go a 
long way to making multimedia and audio on the desktop a going concern 
out of the box.

It would also go a long way to quelling the mass of derision on the net 
about the state of Linux audio. Many people refuse to acknowledge the 
effort that has gone into pulseaudio and the advances that have been 
made simply because pulse tries to take over the system and refuses to 
get off the court when the adults are playing. Hence it is now seen as a 
pita and gettign in the way by many people. This can be fixed with a 
little more work.

Desktop Linux users need these features:

1: Auto detect sound card
2: Easily accessible volume controls
3: Easy to define default sound card and route audio streams
4: Easy to start mutiple multimedia apps and route the audio
5: Easy to change from being a consumer user to a professional user and 
back again.

IMO 1 to 4 have been fairly well accomplished but step 5 is currently fubar.

Pulse should detect if jack has been started and cede control of the 
audio device.
Pulse should allow users the option of auto switching to the jack i/os 
or using a different device.
Pulse should retain these configuration settings.

Pulse should assume that when a user starts jack they want their audio 
to be temporarily reconfigured and if that means routing the pulse 
stream to /dev/null for a brief period then it should handle that 
internally and maintain existing application streams. Once it has 
successfully reconfigured to connect with jack or an alternate device it 
can redirect the audio streams to the chosen output.














Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd