[LAU] html5 in ff through jack

[David Kastrup]

Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf-ZCLZIpdjs0kJGwgDXS7ZQA at public.gmane.org>
writes:

> On Wed, 1 Nov 2017 08:59:43 -0500, Chris Caudle wrote:
>>Is there a reason to not use pulse for the desktop apps
> On Wed, 01 Nov 2017 15:49:48 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
>>What's wrong with running pulseaudio
>
> I can't speak for the OP, I neither need Firefox with jackd support,
> nor do I need pulseaudio. To make music I need jackd, for anything else
> I need plain alsa, resp. most of the times I even don't need plain
> alsa, but just the bell, printf "\a". However, jackd support is a nice
> feature. To run two sound servers instead IMO is absurd.
>
> I don't have pulseaudio installed 1. because it gains me absolutely
> nothing and 2. for historical reasons, it did cause endless trouble
> when it was installed and upstream was ignorant and scornful. Nowadays
> pulseaudio might cause no issues anymore, but then again, why should I
> run something that I don't need?

Because all the main desktop applications use it, volume buttons are
routed through it, and it makes reassigning different devices easy.

I don't autostart it though: I don't want it hogging CPU time while
recording.  jackd is not a desktop daemon: it has a single sample rate,
supports basically a single sound card, does not do bluetooth and so on.
It is basically the realtime thread for dealing with one sound card (and
Midi subsystems).

It also does Ffado (most ALSA sound devices for Firewire hardware suck
with hardware old enough to be supported by Ffado, assuming they even
exist).  And even the ALSA usbstream plugin (like for the Tascam
US-122L).  But once you leave Ardour and jack-controlled plugins,
pulseaudio just connects nicer to the desktop.

Basically, in situations where dropouts are mostly "don't-care",
Pulseaudio tends to do reasonably well.

-- 
David Kastrup