[LAU] YAPD (Yet Another Pulseaudio Debate) [WAS]: Re: Diagnosing JACK

[Lorenzo Sutton]

I'm always weary about jumping into Pulseaudio (and systemd...) debates 
as they always seem to fuel feuds... so I I thought I'd change the 
subject line and uninterested people can skip..

On 10/10/2015 01:39, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Fri, 2015-10-09 at 14:46 -0700, Len Ovens wrote:
>> There is a "PA must be removed" religion... best to ignore it. A lot
>> of it has more to do with the people invloved with making PA and their
>> attitudes rather than if PA works well or not. Some of it is also from
>> when PA had a lot more problems than it does now.
>
> That's wrong. Using one sound server usually just makes more sense, than
> using several sound servers that conflict with each other.


In my humble opinion, it's actually right and adheres to a principle of 
using a more advanced sound server for more advanced audio/music 
scenarios (and software) and a 'deskop-oriented' server for desktop 
scenarios.

As with all solution the ideal is when different pieces of technology 
dealing with similar content/media/things (in this case audio) are able 
to interact / live together.
In my case my audio machine has always also been my 'desktop' machine - 
just because - and jack / pulseaudio interaction has never been a big 
issue. The issues I have (had) with pulsaudio are always related to its 
interaction with 'legacy' alsa-only applications (e.g. the xfce mixer).

My point of view is that Pulseaudio has actually made linux audio (in a 
broad meaning) more easy, more usable and more configurable than e.g. on 
windows (the control you get with pavcontrol is magnitudes higher and 
more intuitive than a windows 'mixer').

I see jack as the more advanced linux audio layer which most users can 
easily ignore. For me it's like extreme gamer-oriened graphics (hardware 
and software)... I can't really be botherd as long as I can use gimp, 
inkscape, pingus, and watch a video smoothly I'm happy with my graphics :-)

The jack paradigm (connect any audio application to any other audio 
application) is really powerful (and personally one of the reasons which 
drew me to Linux). Yet it is just a bit more complicated to set-up, 
especially for users coming from other operating systems, but I wouldn't 
blame pulseaudio for that - actually there's no one to 'blame'...

Lorenzo.