[LAU] Installing Google Voice Chat for Linux on Fedora instead of Debian

[Niels Mayer]

FYI if you're running without pulseaudio (so as to avoid the problems
it introduces -- see two messages below as examples), the
GoogleTalkPlugin has an annoying delay every time it tries to access
an audio device, as it's querying for pulseaudio and not finding it
present and timing out. Each time this happens, you'll see a message
     "socket(): Address family not supported by protocol"
On the browser's standard output. Worse than the message, when making
an outgoing call, this adds a few seconds of waiting before the call
actually dials and connects.

To solve this problem, start up chrome like this: "google-chrome
--disable-sound"

This doesn't actually disable web audio, or sound from the browser --
it just prevents attempting to use pulseaudio, and not giving timeouts
and errors when it can't be found.

IMHO, a better implementation of GoogleTalkPlugin would  use KDE's
Phonon ( http://userbase.kde.org/Phonon ), at least for those using
KDE. Google should offer a KDE version of GoogleTalkPlugin to avoid
the myriad problems we're seeing with the current
gnome/pulseaudio-based implementation. Note that Skype uses Qt and
Phonon, and benefits in reliability and usability due to this choice.
One of the big advantages of Phonon is that it works well independent
of whether pulseaudio is present. It also allows clean integration of
http://jackaudio.org/ and it allows you to dedicate certain kinds of
Audio (e.g. VoIP) to work on a specific card -- such as a USB headset
-- while allowing regular system sounds, music to use other
soundcards.

-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com

PS: A few pulseaudio related fixes/hacks needed for GoogleTalkPlugin:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/chat/thread?tid=10ffe01c3a4779f5&hl=en&fid=10ffe01c3a4779f500048faf0a748e82

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Hi,

A few posts have been about microphones. In particular the auto level
adjust feature that google chat uses. Others, who have had issues with
the internal mic on their laptops/notebooks read on too....

This auto adjust CAN be tuned off.

My symptoms are the same as lintex i.e. for the internal mic to work
the left mic channel must be turned down to zero and the right channel
set to the desired level. Google talk however automatically adjusts
both channels to what it thinks is optimum and thus screws this up.

To see the mix channel settings use PulseAudio Volume control and go
to the input devices tab. PulseAudio Volume control is in the Linux
menus under the sound and video submenu (on Ubuntu anyway). You may
need to install the package pavucontrol to get this gui.

To turn off the auto adjust:

cd ~/.config/google-googletalkplugin    # get to google chat's directory
cp -p options options.bak        # make a backup before changing stuff !
gedit options                # edit the config file

now change one of the lines so that it reads as follows:

audio-flags=1

Now restart you machine and google chat will now longer auto-adjust!!!

Remember to go to PulseAudio volume control just to make sure the left
channel stays at 0

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wd5gnr
9/6/10

I had crackly audio issues -- not bad but annoying. I realized I'd
made some changes to my pulseaudio configuration a long time ago.

If you are comfortable with sudo and a text editor you might try experimenting:

Open /etc/pulse/daemon.conf.. Not sure which of these made the
difference. I was suing src-sinc-best-quality but I think even on my
quad core 3.8Ghz machine it was not doing me any favors. I also
adjusted the number of fragments and the fragment size. You won't find
the comments (lines with ;) in your file because I added them. But you
should find resample-method, default-fragments, and
default-fragment-ize-msec.

Here's the excerpt.

; choices in order from best to worst:
; src-sinc-best-quality, src-sinc-medium-quality, src-sinc-fastest,
speex-float-{10-0}, speex-fixed-{10-0}, ffmpeg, src-zero-order-hold,
src-linear, trivial
; default is speex-float-1
resample-method = src-sinc-fastest

And further down:
; default is 4 and 25
; was suggested to do 8 and 10
default-fragments = 32
default-fragment-size-msec = 25

Now my calls are GREAT quality!!!
--------------------------

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