8 Jun
2009
8 Jun
'09
3:44 p.m.
On Sat, Jun 06, 2009 at 12:18:37PM -0400, Rob wrote:
:-)
I did this with Evolution some time back. I got tired of it accidentally launching from
Firefox all the time. For sound daemons, I just disable them from /etc/rcX.d by using the
"update-rc.d" script. And I run a desktop WM (ion3) that doesn't try to
impose any sound daemon on me.
Exactly. I've been ritually disabling desktop sound daemons on any machine I install
for 10 years now.
For pro audio work, JACK is great and essential, but other than that, sound daemons get
the way much more than they help. Linux apps want to talk directly to the hardware. For
multiple desktop apps using the sound card simultaneously, there's dmix, as you
mention, already in ALSA. Problem solved.
All Ubuntu
users (GNome) seems to do all kind of hacks to remove or
disable pulseaudio. Also Dave names it as a solution to work with
pulseaudio on Ubuntu Studio.
AFAIK you can solve this whole thing by:
$ pasuspender qjackctl
Fair enough, but by the time I go "pasuspender firefox" and "pasuspender
virtualbox" and pasuspender all the other programs I use that cause
Pulseaudio to use 100% of my CPU and stutter madly while causing no similar
problems using plain Alsa (or JACK, when it's supported), I've accomplished
the same thing as "sudo mv /usr/bin/pulseaudio
/usr/bin/pulseaudio.disabled; sudo ln -s /bin/false /usr/bin/pulseaudio;
killall pulseaudio" which I only have to do once. If I'm right, we should find new ways to
prevent having all those myths
Pulseaudio performing poorly for many people is not a myth. I look forward
to the day when PA provides solid playback performance, low latency and
automagically sends my audio to all my other machines. In the meantime,
it's as useless as esd or artsd and much more of a hog. There's no need
for me to report bugs because eliminating it is exactly as useful to me as
getting the bugs fixed. I have Alsa's built-in mixing for multiplexing audio of mainstream apps, JACK as a necessary evil for
real audio apps, and
for the once in 3 or 4 years that I want to share audio between machines,
icecast. PA is a scratch in need of an itch.
I think it's much more good than evil, but it sure is necessary. When I'm not
doing audio work, I kill it, and also (on my EEE) turn cpufreq back on powersave.
-ken