Audio Problems with PulseAudio in Ubuntu 9.10

[Joseph Schwenker]

I used to think that PulseAudio was okay, until... oh dear. PulseAudio is a nightmare! I was thinking that with the "redesigned 3G sound system" in Ubuntu 9.10 would let my source engine games have sound with WINE, but instead, it goofed up WINE, all 3D applications and games, and everything. I personally love the redesigned audio control panel. It is great. It is very simple to use, and I was able to switch microphones in a matter of seconds. However, I am having numerous "no-sound" incidents, crashes, and bugs due to PulseAudio. For instance, the Blender game "Yo Frankie!" has crackling, unlistenable audio. OpenArena, Urban Terror, and every other cool game there is. NeverPutt and NeverBall aren't having problems for some reason, though. I am tired of PulseAudio! Games that worked in WINE before now don't work at all! So, my question is, how can I switch back to ALSA and still have a volume control on my panel? Of course, WINE games won't even work with ALSA, but better the native ones work and the WINE ones don't than neither work. Please help!

[H13N.H3N]

i never used to think that pulseaudio is ok, not even fine or worst is nothing (thus having no sound is even better than have pulse audio), i'm a Ubuntu Studio 9.10 K. K. user, the problem is worst for me due that i actually use lots of sound features, i can't work with audacity for example due that PulseAudio is integrated deeply on my system so i can't choice a device for playback like i would do if i used ALSA indeed, i looked at some bugs reports about some problems i have and as far as i understand we will have to make our minds with pulseaudio, because 'it's the only way to improve sound experiencie in linux', i changed from Mandriva because i had TOO many problems with Jack Audio Server, i though that Ubuntu Studio would be a better choice and actually is, amaizing i should say, but PulseAudio is just a mess, in Mandriva, from the control panel i was able to choice what sound services my system could use, and PulseAudio could be deactivated easily from there without the need of purge or uninstall it, with Ubuntu Studio this does not only seem not possible, but now it looks really implosible; PulseAudio is everywhere and many of the programs depends on it, my intel integrated soundcard has native support for open system but pulse audio don't let it work that way and indeed, makes my system slower, aplications in wine are a nightmare, the volume control starts and takes 60% of my memory doing nothing, because not only it can't start, doesn't even close, Rhythmbox crashes randomly, LMMS has sound glitches, Jack is called but not used by Pulse Audio so Rosegarden and Lives have problems, Kdenlive crashes trying to playback and as i mentioned, many of those programs can't choise a device that really works wich would be ALSA..

As i couldn't find how just 'disable' PA, i decided uninstallit, it toke with it a dependency called UbuntuStudio-Desktop, i don't know what it does as the desription is... how i can say it...nonsense, it's the slogan from Ubuntu Studio, after sometime that didn't matter anymore and i uninstalled all what i found with the name 'PulseAudio in it, it was notably fast and good, BUT, incomplete, the GNOME Volume Control is lost and with Pulse Audio is broken plus maybe moreproblems i haven't see because PA is not present, but perhaps is not worst than having it installed.. STIIILLL i re-installed it because i don't know what is really worst.. an incomplete distribution or a full distribution with sound teared appart... just damn it...

[Sin@Sin-Sacrifice]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSou.../KarmicCaveats This might help with pulseaudio. Did for me. Then there's also the sticky http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449 which helped me in a lot of cases with different versions of ubuntu. I have absolutely no problems with sound since an upgrade to Karmic and some tweaking from the former link. It is in fact the best audio I've had since playing around with PCs. Audacity is a tool I use quite often along with many of the Ubuntu Studio apps... and I can't complain at all. Hope this helps you guys.

About wine... I had the same issue and setting it to oss only worked. Yo Frankie sucks all around unless you compile it yourself. The binaries aren't that great but can work for some people.

[H13N.H3N]

i'll check those threads, thanks for your interest by the way, maybe you aren't having nightmarish problems with audio due that your system as you wrote in your sig has nice capabilities, but i'm a student with a student's pc and so space and memory is important for me, i played with wine's settings and only set ALSA and OSS as sound drivers, at first all the programs work decent, not good, but is smoething

[Zoot7]

So, my question is, how can I switch back to ALSA and still have a volume control on my panel? Of course, WINE games won't even work with ALSA, but better the native ones work and the WINE ones don't than neither work. Please help!

The simple answer is you can't, not with Karmic. The developers decided to remove the Gnome Volume Control from Karmic. One particular command that is useful however is pasuspender; it temporiarly stops pulseaudio and allows other apps to use Alsa.
Another option of course is to remove pulsaudio, install the Gnome Alsa Mixer and tie it to the tray with alltray. It's not as nice as an applet but it works.

A possible solution is to fetch the source code for the "Gnome Media" and "Gnome Applets" from the Debian Unstable repositories (which too uses Gnome 2.28 ) and recompile yourself with the configure options specified not to depend on Pulseaudio. Of course that assumes that the Gnome Volume Control is in the Debian Unstable package.
What might also work is to download the source code off the Gnome site for "Gnome Media", remove the version that's installed and re-compile it yourself.
I've been meaning to try this for a while now, but I haven't got around to it yet.

[Sin@Sin-Sacrifice]

i'll check those threads, thanks for your interest by the way, maybe you aren't having nightmarish problems with audio due that your system as you wrote in your sig has nice capabilities, but i'm a student with a student's pc and so space and memory is important for me, i played with wine's settings and only set ALSA and OSS as sound drivers, at first all the programs work decent, not good, but is smoething

True... perhaps it is the hardware. I hope the links help man... I know how frustrating it can be to love music and video and editing and all the fun therein but having issues at every corner.

[isoToxin]

I had issues with pulseaudio causing apps to lock my cpu at 100% quite frequently. In the end, I just stopped the pulseaudio daemon from loading, which cured all my problems. The only other tweak I needed to make was to add a startup item to restore all my volume levels, as they were being muted on each boot. Basically, I did the following steps to get my system how I wanted it.

Stopped the daemon from ever auto-spawning itself whenever it is killed.

This is done by creating a file called
client.conf
in the
~/.pulse
folder.

Add a line to this file:
autospawn = no

Once that's done, you should be able to kill pulseaudio by doing:
pulseaudio -k
If the daemon doesn't restart, it's worked.

Then, I moved the following script to my home folder where it was out of the way, so it wouldn't launch pulse at all.

/etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio

Once that's moved, pulse should no longer launch when you login.

I then downloaded gnome-alsamixer so that I had an alternative vol control.

Finally, I set my volume levels how I wanted them, then stored them using:

alsactl store

I added a new startup item (system -> preferences -> startup). The command for this item is:

alsactl restore

This should use the vol levels you stored previously and set them each time gnome starts.

After all this, I'm finally happy with the audio in ubuntu. All this was done without completely removing pulse, and it can be started whenever necessary with

pulseaudio -D

and killed again with:

pulseaudio -k

[H13N.H3N]

The only other tweak I needed to make was to add a startup item to restore all my volume levels, as they were being muted on each boot

This is known issue, as it is written is one of many Volume anomalies and seems to be a common trouble because i have it too with or without PulseAudio, though it is due to some dependence with pulseaudio relation.

After all this, I'm finally happy with the audio in ubuntu. All this was done without completely removing pulse

that is provably the closest way to do things 'right' because no other solution works for now, i explored PulseAudio Manager and it has a button which 'let's you shutdown PulseAudio' as far as i understand for it's look:

Unfortunately this does not work as it should/would seem/be, i haven't tried yet what you said about avoid PulseAudio from spawning every time is killed from the System Monitor, i learned from all the times i messed my Mandriva distro that forcing an app to close or 'die' would cause internal conflicts that can lead to a system crash.

The simple answer is you can't, not with Karmic. The developers decided to remove the Gnome Volume Control from Karmic.

that's not thrue at all, and i don't know if it's good or not, because the process gnome-volume-control does exist as such, "works" and eats memory, but can't start properly, not even die if you kill it from the system monitor, when succesfully killed and restarted the next error appear:

(gnome-volume-control-applet:4475): WARNING **: Connection failed

maybe completely removed from karmic would be a better idea then, as for gnome-volume-control is not available from the repos but i think is included in the package that has 'various panel applets', returning to the page were the known issues that karmic has, is also mentioned that:

The ALSA volume control is hidden in Karmic, because you normally do not need to mess with it (most things you need are in the new volume control applet). But in some cases you still need to access the ALSA-level volume control.

Also i don't know if anyone else has noticed yet, but there's also a constant intermittent sound glitch even if no aplication is playing sound, this is not fault of my drivers or hardware because i also had Mandriva and Ubuntu 8.10 installed before 9.10.

[gradinaruvasile]

The gnome-volume-control is brand new in Karmic... Its essentially pavucontrol wrapped and transformed in a more user friendly/ergonomic format - despite this i found that changing stream volumes dont really work well in it - pavucontrol on the other hand does the job just fine.
So ALSA users are condemned to the alsamixergui(s), or alsamixer in terminal.
The "Connection failed" message comes from the inability to connect to the PulseAudio server (for example when the PulseAudio process is killed).

Lately i have been playing around PulseAudio in Karmic Xubuntu (this distribution comes with ALSA by default and u have the control applet just like in Jaunty)
and i found it quite useful for some situations - i have a bluetooth hands free and PA (+blueman manager) lets u use it. Its really awesome stuff. 2-3 clicks and u are set.

But on the downside is the bugged nature of PulseAudio, or should i say its inability to cope with non so standard ALSA implementations. This makes that only newer/standards compliant applications work 100% stable with PulseAudio. But it seems that many apps around are designed to work standalone with their output plugins and they dont like being pushed around by this newcomer supervisor...

Most complex games have problems (excepting maybe the ones that right now are developed actively and there is possibility to add/modify the sound plugins) not to speak about Wine emulation.

[H13N.H3N]

i made my mind and followed the steps mentioned before:

1.-create a file called ¡client.conf' in the ~/.pulse folder.

2.-Add a line to this file: autospawn = no

3.-kill pulseaudio by doing: pulseaudio -k If the daemon doesn't restart, it's worked.

4.-move the following script to 'home' folder where it was out of the way, so it wouldn't launch pulse at all: /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio

plus, i added a 'custom' launcher in my panel with the comand 'gnome-alsamixer' to have an easy way to access to the sound panel, i can't control the volume anymore with the mouse wheel but is a minor issue, also when i press the volume buttons from my laptop the graphic showing how much the volume is increasing or decreasing does not show up anymore, indeed i assume that the volume is changed accordingly to the buttons, finally i disabled also the 'Volume Control' from the startup, not removed but just disabled, nothing is uninstalled or modified so it's cool with the system, now i'm working good with Karmic Koala, but i have to say it, what a stupid idea make PulseAudio so depply integrated with the system, just so stupid does not even matter if is the only way to evolve the sound experience, by default Ubuntu Studio has version 'stable' of wine installed, 1.0 as well with many if not all packages, why then using the worst bugy unstable sound system and making it by force the one that controls all the sound in a Ubuntu Distribution?, why not keeping with alsa that is really stable and keep PulseAudio as an option? man, that makes no sense no matter what the explain for this cause is.

BTW ixoToxin, thanks for the suggestion, now i can start real work on my PC =D