HOWTO: PulseAudio Fixes & System-Wide Equalizer Support

[ShepHeard]

@hawthornso23: I think possibly you have not had 6 months of intermittently working Skype. Hours every night searching the for a for help, trying so many things you have to frequently reinstall because you've lost any idea of what you've done so far; of getting skype to work 'sort-of' but never properly. Of having to reboot the computer with the headphones in so that your speakers aren't stuck on, then having to reboot once finished so you can listen to some music. Of, even after taking every precaution – i.e. running skype, and only skype, and making sure you do nothing else during your session – even after all that, having skype inexplicably not recognising your (usb; you never got the onboard mic working) microphone, and no amount of rebooting (and removing the battery etc) getting it back again until a couple of days later.

I think that once you’ve been through that, you’ll come to understand the rage.

I’m interested to know why you think Pulse Audio is part of the solution? I’m not being facetious, I’m genuinely interested. I stand by what I, and others have done, and moved away from Pulse Audio. Moreover, from what I understand, (see the OP) it’s the Ubuntu dev’s rather botched implementation of PA that may be the cause of so many problems.

@kakyoism: This didn’t fix the sound on my HP, but I know it’s helped out a load of other people, so always worth a try.

@chinmaykamat: So start a new thread?

[psyke83]

EXCITING NEWS!!!

Fixed my HP Pavilion dv3 (ICH9) with tip on this post
http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/audio_intel_hda

One line fix in alsa-base.conf, with an upgrade to 1.0.20

Strongly recommend HP guys to use this guide.

It's in French, but it really shouldn't matter, just find your model in the table!

Jaunty is not bad at all. Just need more OFFICIAL documentation for EACH individual hardware.

Glad you found that solution, but it's not a PulseAudio issue, it's an ALSA kernel issue.

You should file a bug on launchpad with your codec information, informing them that you needed to use that driver quirk. Later versions will then incorporate that quirk for your hardware by default.

[kakyoism]

@Shepheard,,

I found another quirk that killed my sound:
On my laptop, you don't install pavucontrol on Jaunty, like psyke83 said, you don't need them on Jaunty: it (and possibly a load of dependencies) instantly kills all sound that I just fixed. Removing them solved my problem. Basically I had clean installation and the fix in my last comment, although this thread did solve my Hardy problem, like I said.

[kakyoism]

@psyke83,

I just did it.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/340205

[ShepHeard]

@Kakyoism: Interesting - I wondered if I had maybe installed pavucontrol before I edited the ALSA conf file. However, checking back (on my last effort I logged everything I did) updating ALSA and editing the conf file was the first thing I did, and still no joy.

[ShepHeard]

@Psyke83: Did you manage to undestand anything from my pulseaudio -vv outout post (here)?

[hawthornso23]

I’m interested to know why you think Pulse Audio is part of the solution? I’m not being facetious, I’m genuinely interested. I stand by what I, and others have done, and moved away from Pulse Audio. Moreover, from what I understand, (see the OP) it’s the Ubuntu dev’s rather botched implementation of PA that may be the cause of so many problems.

Audio on linux has been a mess for years.

• before the mess we all used OSS. It was a soundblaster emulator but couldn't mix or be shared by applications. An application would lock it and not release the lock, and nothiung else could use audio. It couldn't meet the needs of audio nerds for systems with multiple sound carss or for piping sound between multiple input devices. The developers also decided to go proprietary for the next version which was planned to include a mixer implemented in kernel space - a big no-no for the linux kernel team.
• A number of replacement projects started. The gnome people wrote ALSA. The KDE people wrote ARTs. The Evolution people wrote ESD. The audio nerds wrote JACK. OSS eventually went GPL and is another option. The list is not exhaustive. Each is a noble project in its own right with its own strengths and weaknesses.
• But now we have lots of audio applications with overlapping functionality. They have to fight each other for access to the hardware. Different distros or GUIs choose different combinations and configurations. There are now lots of APIs for sound leaving programmers bewildered as to which to use. Each audio application has to know about every API so that a program written for one application can function on a system which has another installed. Each has to know enough about all of the others to coexists with it or substitute for it or work with it if possible. Each has a control panel with its own sliders and settings to control volume and so on. Sound on linux becomes a nightmare.

The reason why I think pulse audio is part of the solution is that it is a sound server - an application designed specifically to interface well with others and to pipe sound between them. Instead of every audio component having to interface with all other audio components - they only need to know how to interface with pulse which should simplify things a lot.

[spacemanskip]

At the bottom of Appendix A it says "If you require assistance with a particular application - or simply cannot get PulseAudio to work - provide a list of playback devices and the verbose output from pulse.

Is there an email address I should send this info to or should I just post it all here?

[lazylew]

I'm on Jaunty and hoped this thread would solve the no-sound issue I have in MuseScore (or mscore).
Starting the program via terminal works (without sound), but gave me this info:

ludo@ludo-desktop:~$ mscore
Connection failure: Connection refused
pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refusedSuspending PulseAudio
Connection failure: Connection refused
next note at 41040(measure 0) voice 0 for tie not found

also in the steps of the A section I couldn't get the PA device chooser opened; maybe that's where it flunked?EDIT: after posting this I noticed that 2 small icons had appeared for PA applet - problem is I don't know what to do with it; server? sink?)

[drdrewusaf]

Warning 2: The equalizer may not work on 64 bit systems, as extra 32-bit libraries could be required. If it doesn't work, simply revert the changes you made.
Warning 3: The equalizer currently does not work for Jaunty users, as there seems to be missing LADSPA plugins in the libasound2-plugins package. I'm investigating the issue currently.

I am, admittedly, to lazy to read ALL of the posts in this guide regarding the above quote. However, I just wanted to point out that the plugin mbeq_1197 (along w/ a load of others) is available at the source:

http://plugin.org.uk/

I'm in 64-bit Jaunty right now and my slightly modified version (frequencies are the ONLY change I made) of the plugin is working properly. The only issue I've seen so far is Songbird causing the Pulseaudio server to crash whenever I press play (luckily it's not my primary player).

If this has already been stated, but the guide hasn't been updated yet, please disregard.



Drew