17 Feb
2011
17 Feb
'11
4:30 p.m.
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:23 AM, Dan Capp <reflectremain(a)gmail.com> wrote:
why install pulseaudio in the first place? I don't
know to be honest. I'm
still getting to grips with how Linux audio works and what the various
drivers and tools even do, let alone how they do it. So it's good to hear
someone with a different perspective on the usefulness of PulseAudio etc.
The KXStudio website states the following:
"users will be glad to know that Jack2 is present and that *all* audio
output is sent to it. This includes Pulse-Audio, which means that you don't
have to stop Jack if you need to, for example, open a Web Browser to watch
some tutorial videos."
I've read lots of people agree that this is a great idea - I'm still trying
to fully understand why because it seems that I DO need to stop Jack, or at
least re-route it, if I want to open a web browser and watch some tutorial
videos.
Personally, I would say that KXStudio has made a mistake here. There
is no reason to run PulseAudio for this purpose. Torben wrote a
libflashsupport-jack which routes Flash straight to JACK, and
http://jackaudio.org/faq describes ways to get a variety of other
desktop software to talk to JACK. I spend all day listening to
internet radio and my own music collection via Rhythmbox, browing the
catalog at emusic.com, watching Flash *and* working on Ardour ... all
via JACK and all without a large, complex layer like PulseAudio in the
middle.
Some of these are not quite as robust as they should be but it would
be far better (I think) to focus resources on making them more robust
than introducing PulseAudio as a desktop<->JACK middle layer.