[all variants] No sound after running Flash, YouTube, etc. (pulseaudio solution)

[Vegetarianrage]

If anyone with any experience can something in this post feel free to pm me.

As I understand it, Pulseaudio is a "soundserver" which is simply to say that it takes the input from your apps and manages/mixes them to send it all as a single stream to the soundcard.

After running flash audio in firefox, (youtube, for example) my sound would no longer work for anything but other flash audio. Trying to play audio files in totem or any other player would hang at 0 seconds.
A very help user in #alsa on chat.freenode.net walked me through this solution last night and the end result was that my sound worked with flash and other programs, even simultaneously.

Here is EVERYTHING that we did:

<hypercool^> my sound seems to work fine, then i load a webpage with flash in it, which also works fine. But afterwards, only flash sounds will work. normal sounds will not play
<wishie> hypercool^: flash has a way of not using 'dmix' on some systems.. which means it hogs the soundcard.
<wishie> hypercool^: is pulseaudio working ?
<wishie> pulseaudio is a 'soundserver'
<wishie> basically, apps send sound to it, and it mixes the sounds together, and outputs to the sound card.
<hypercool^> i checked synaptic and it is installed for sure.
<hypercool^> i had sound before i tried to use flash
<hypercool^> so i assume it works? or it did?
<wishie> well, make sure its running..

ps aux |grep pulse

<hypercool^>

john@eleanor:/etc/init.d$ ps aux |grep pulse
john      5866  0.0  0.2  28628  6004 ?        Sl   Apr27   0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --log-target=syslog
john      5872  0.0  0.1   5776  2248 ?        S    Apr27   0:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper
john      7721  0.0  0.0   3008   772 pts/0    R+   00:22   0:00 grep pulse

<wishie> hypercool^: so, its running.. now we want to know if its being used..heh
<wishie> hypercool^: is libflashsupport installed

sudo apt-cache policy libflashsupport

<hypercool^> ok
<hypercool^> "installed: none"
<hypercool^> i'm a little confused, what does libflashsupport do if i already have working flash?
<wishie> tells flash to use pulseaudio, among other things
<wishie> was there a 'candidate' ?
<hypercool^> yes 1.9-0ubuntu1
<wishie> install that

sudo apt-get install libflashsupport

<hypercool^> wishie, ok installed it
<wishie> unfortunately, im not too familiar with the ubuntu 8.04 default install..
<wishie> hypercool^: check if padevchooser and paman are installed

apt-cache policy padevchooser
apt-cache policy paman

<hypercool^> no, neither of them are installed
<hypercool^> but there is a candidate for each one? should i repeat what we did for libflashsupport?
<wishie> ok, install padevchooser and paman

sudo apt-get install padevchooser paman

<hypercool^> ok
<wishie> that way, we can monitor if flash uses pulseaudio
<hypercool^> thanks for explaining i hate following blind instructions
<hypercool^> installing...
<hypercool^> done
<wishie> hypercool^: ok, run (i think, from memory) its padevchooser

padevchooser

<wishie> is there an icon in the gnome bar now ?
<hypercool^> wishie, lol yes good call
<wishie> hypercool^: what options does it give (been a while since i used it.. brb
<hypercool^> manager, volume control, volume meter (playback), volume meter (recording), configure local sound server
<wishie> manager
<wishie> thats the one you want to run

Note: You can run the manager by clicking the pulse audio icon in the gnome bar and clicking "manager" or by running

paman

in a terminal.

<hypercool^> lol
<hypercool^> ok
<wishie> run that, click on the clients tab
<wishie> run a flash video, and see if it shows up as a client.
<hypercool^> yes just showed up
<hypercool^> oh well this interesting, it shows up but the flash video won't play lol
<hypercool^> ok it's working
<hypercool^> it's in the client list
<hypercool^> wishie, "Adobe Flash" showed up in the client list
<wishie> configure your other apps to use pulseaudio now..
<wishie> create the file ~/.asoundrc

sudo nano ~/.asoundrc

<wishie> and put the following in it.

pcm.!default {
type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
type pulse
}

<hypercool^> ok done
<wishie> test flash with other programs now
<hypercool^> testing...
<wishie> each program you open, should show up in "clients" tab of paman
<wishie> they should all play nicely now
<hypercool^> hopefully
<wishie> are other sound apps showing up in 'clients' as you use them ?
<hypercool^> yes.....
<hypercool^> you're a genius thank you
<wishie> heh
<wishie> now
<hypercool^> everything seems to working
<wishie> you might want..
<wishie> pavucontrol, pavumeter
<wishie> each program now has its own seperate volume control aswell
<wishie> and you can monitor it all, etc.
<hypercool^> niceeeeee
<wishie> all accessible from 'padevchooser' (which is the tray icon)
<wishie> why ubuntu doesnt have it like this in the first place, is beyond me.
<hypercool^> yeah i don't know
<hypercool^> even vista has process specific volume control
<wishie> well, you can even move streams to different cards with PA
<wishie> if you have several cards, you can move different sound streams to different cards, mid stream... on the fly
<hypercool^> niice
<hypercool^> well that's coming
<hypercool^> but i'n not there just yet
<wishie> well, i gotta run now
<wishie> bread to bake
* wishie is now known as wishie[work]
<hypercool^> THANK YOU!
<wishie[work]> no worries
<wishie[work]> you're welcome