HOWTO: PulseAudio Fixes & System-Wide Equalizer Support

[psyke83]

i'm in part B of the procedure and i'm writing in terminal

$ wget -c http://launchpadlibrarian.net/161508...conn2_i386.deb

the message that i get is

... http://:8080/: Invalid host name.

what can i do?

That's a weird error that suggests your system is using some kind of proxy server that's incorrectly configured, perhaps.

This week I'm going to (finally) set up a PPA containing updated ALSA and Flash components to finally make things work smoothly. Perhaps you can hold off until then.

[psyke83]

Hey very nice guide.
My issue is stuttering. It seems to me that the higher the numbers for the fragment rate and size in daemon.conf are the better my audio sounds. With lower numbers the audio is nothing but stuttering (with rate=2 and size=1 it sounds like just a high pitch tone, with rate=40000 and size=250000 it stutters intermitently, although the best it's been is rate=8 and size =28 but that still has intermitent stutering).

I'm a little confused. Which parameter are you referring to by "rate"? There are only two exposed settings for fragments, and they are:

default-fragments = 4
default-fragment-size-msec = 25

If you were referring to "default-sample-rate" when you mention "rate", you shouldn't change that value: it has nothing to do with fragments or buffers, but it is the default sample rate in which PulseAudio uses. This should be left alone in most circumstances.

[psyke83]

Thanks a lot for the tutorial. I tried it but then realized that Skype was being a bit irresponsive and the CPU usage due to skype had shot up to 100 %.

I hence had to revert back to my previous setting. Do you have any suggestions to get things working properly?

You should try the libasound2 and libasound-plugins packages from Intrepid. Hardy's version does not work well with Skype. I'm going to set up a PPA to make this process more painless in the future (since the bugs seem to be getting fixed at a glacial pace).

[psyke83]

Hey this helpped amarok from stuttering and firefox video viewing, BUT now when im not playing anything i can here a soft buzzing sound. I have an eee pc 4gb i did all the steps accept d i think. Im not even sure if this pc is i386 or not but im pretty sure it is. Any ideas?????

I want you to try two steps, and please log out and back in between the first and second step:

1. When you hear the buzzing sound, kill the pulseaudio server:

$ pulseaudio -k

Verify that pulseaudio has stopped (paste the output here if you're unsure), then listen to see if the buzzing continues to occur, or not.

2. When you hear the buzzing sound, open the GNOME Volume Control applet and mute *all* the entries on the playback tab. You may need to enable hidden entries via the Preferences button in order to test this fully.

Let me know the results. If the second step worked, then progressively unmute each entry until you find the offending item. Otherwise, unmute everything to avoid losing sound entirely.

[dansan]

Hi psyke83,

Just after posting my thank-you note a few minutes ago, which I stick by, I discovered that sound in Hardy only comes through the earpiece of my CS-60 mic.

I've tried looking at System -> Preferences -> Default Sound Card, but this does not work after doing the changes in your tutorial. My System -> Preferences -> Sound settings are shown in the attached screen shot.

Generally, I want sound through my speakers. How do I direct it there?

[kieonsegg]

SWEEET. Got a buzzing sound, tried to remove alltheprograms you told e to install, then it stared to delete firefox, amarok,pidgin, basket, cheese. Now my system dosent boot and i have to doeverything oer again. WHY THE HELL DO PEOPLE LIKE LINUX?!?!? Wats so special about it??? Its ike windows but confusing

[psyke83]

Hi psyke83,

Just after posting my thank-you note a few minutes ago, which I stick by, I discovered that sound in Hardy only comes through the earpiece of my CS-60 mic.

I've tried looking at System -> Preferences -> Default Sound Card, but this does not work after doing the changes in your tutorial. My System -> Preferences -> Sound settings are shown in the attached screen shot.

Generally, I want sound through my speakers. How do I direct it there?

Unfortunately the System/Preferences/Sound application does not control PulseAudio directly. It's possible you're experiencing this "problem" as PulseAudio allows hotplugging of audio devices (which ALSA never did before). For example, when I insert my USB Skype phone, PulseAudio selects that as the default PCM device.

Open the PulseAudio Device Chooser (from Applications/Sound & Video), then click on the applet in the notification tray and choose "Manager..."

Look on the Server Information tab and see what is defined for the "Default Sink" (probably the CS-60).

Try this: play some content in e.g. Totem, and launch the PulseAudio Volume Control applet (again from the PulseAudio Device Chooser). On the Playback tab, you should see an entry for Totem. Right click on the Totem entry, select "Move stream" and try to change the stream from the CS-60 to your desired output device.

Let me know if it worked, and I'll tell you how to set the default device without having to manually move streams like the above .

[psyke83]

SWEEET. Got a buzzing sound, tried to remove alltheprograms you told e to install, then it stared to delete firefox, amarok,pidgin, basket, cheese. Now my system dosent boot and i have to doeverything oer again. WHY THE HELL DO PEOPLE LIKE LINUX?!?!? Wats so special about it??? Its ike windows but confusing

I didn't ask you to uninstall any packages (in fact, I replied with troubleshooting steps for your issue just a few minutes ago). It's unfortunate that you tried removing obviously vital packages - let it be a lesson for you to never blindly remove packages .

Also, there's no need to troll. You may have been able to restore your system if you tried reinstalling the "ubuntu-desktop" metapackage from the console (if you had a working network connection). Too bad.

[kieonsegg]

I didn't ask you to uninstall any packages (in fact, I replied with troubleshooting steps for your issue just a few minutes ago). It's unfortunate that you tried removing obviously vital packages - let it be a lesson for you to never blindly remove packages .

Also, there's no need to troll. You may have been able to restore your system if you tried reinstalling the "ubuntu-desktop" metapackage from the console (if you had a working network connection). Too bad.

Yea tahnks for your help. I thought i could undo the changes lol
Well ill be back to normal in about 5 hours once m done installing it from a usb

[manlypain]

It's possible that too many client connection are being made, which overloads PulseAudio. There seems to be a bug filed that deals with your issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...io/+bug/237443

I would suggest you try using the libasound2 and libasound2-plugins packages from Intrepid's repository to see if it helps at all.

Thanks for the idea. I am a noob so it might take me a day to be able to test this out. Do the connections have to be all at once to do this or is it a max number over time thing? I had a hard time understanding the bug report page. When i first start the machine an check the "Clients" tab in the PA Manager i have 8 or 9 EsoundD clients attached. After it crashes only 1 shows up after i restart the service. PA will still crash after that anyways though