On Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:45:36 -0500 sam javor <zekthedeadcow(a)hotmail.com> wrote: This is very much a distribution problem. As the PulseAudio developer put it: Ubuntu didn't do it's homework when employing PA as standard soundserver. It also comes down to the user, as always. Sure, there are lots of soundsystems and whatnot on linux, which can get confusing, but you don't need to care about most of them. PA is just another layer that attempts, among other things, to make things easier for the user. The problem is: if it doesn't work the way it is intended it's even more complicated than without PA. Personally, I used PA on ubuntustudio 8.04 and it worked well enough for me once I figured out how to use the quite unusual gui controls. Anything production-like was done over jack anyway. Now I'm on Arch Linux, using plain alsa, which worked without trouble out-of-the-box (as far ootb as possible with arch..). So IMHO, with the features PA currently has it's not really worth the trouble and not necessary. It's also not worth page-long rants, especially when it's really a distribution problem. pue