[LAU] RME HDSP Multiface and PulseAudio

[James Warden]

> From: Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com>
> Subject: Re: [LAU] RME HDSP Multiface and PulseAudio
> To: "Steve Fosdick" <sjflists at btinternet.com>
> Cc: linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
> Date: Friday, June 25, 2010, 12:52 PM
> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 11:55 AM,
> Steve Fosdick <sjflists at btinternet.com>
> wrote:
> > I have, for the moment, my RME HDSP Multiface at home
> along with a nice
> > pair of Sennheiser headphones.  The headphones show
> up the shortcomings
> > of the integrated audio I/F on the motherboard so I'd
> like to be able to
> > route "normal" audio to the RME, e.g. use it for
> things like listening
> > to music with rhtythmbox, which seems to mean
> persuading PulseAudio to
> > output to it.
> 
> no, it doesn't. gstreamer has a jack plugin, and you can
> just have RB
> send directly to JACK with it. just set either your
> gstreamer
> properties or system sound properties to use jackaudiosink
> the
> gstreamer plugin has its own issues, the most annoying of
> which being
> that it disconnects and reconnects for every song, but i
> use it to
> listen to my music collection and i-radio all day while
> doing ardour
> development.
> 
> as fons note, pulseaudio really doesn't have a clue what to
> do with a
> card like the HDSP. it could be coerced into doing
> something
> reasonable, but its hardly worth it.


I have a system with an RME HDSP card (Multiface II system) and I faced the exact same issue. So I hacked an ALSA 2 Jack bridge:

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Jack_and_Loopback_device_as_Alsa-to-Jack_bridge

Works really good for what I am using it for. No pulseaudio, no gstreamer, pure ALSA only.

Good luck :)
J.