skype can only see pulseaudio, but not alsa devices

[ireneshusband]

i am having a problem with skype that i wasn't having before, and afaik skype hasn't been upgraded recently, so something else presumably has changed.

because of driver issues i have to use an external usb audio interface to do voip. this interface is not connected to the pulseaudio server. i am able to connect it to jackd and it works fine for both audio in and out. however it no longer shows up in the list of sound devices available to skype. this used not to be the case. i have tried stopping and restarting skype, as well as unplugging and reattaching the interface. the interface does not show up in pulseaudio manager in the lists of devices.

any idea this device isn't showing up in skype?

[Timothy Taylor]

I've just installed Skype and I find the same problem. Any ideas on how to make it work will be very welcome.

[ireneshusband]

I have managed to work around the problem, at least this once, using the following procedure. Most likely some of the following steps aren't necessary, so you may be able to simplify it somewhat:

1. Turn PulseAudio autospawn off, normally: $ echo "autospawn = no" > ~/.pulse/client.conf
2. Kill PulseAudio: $ killall pulseaudio
3. Shut down and restart Skype
4. Go to the Skype sound device options, where your devices should now be exposed; Choose something.
5. Shut down Skype
6. Turn PulseAudio autospawn back on: $ echo "autospawn = yes" > ~/.pulse/client.conf
7. Relaunch PulseAudio: $ pulseaudio -D
8. Launch Skype
9. Edit and test Skype sound device preferences

[Timothy Taylor]

That doesn't work for me.
I still just see "PulseAudio Server (local)" as the only available sound device in Skype.

[malel]

I had the same problem and took care of it by deleting/removing pulse audio
cheers

[segisaurus]

I had the same problem and took care of it by deleting/removing pulse audio
cheers

Just wanted to say that removing pulse audio worked for me too.

sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio

[greybeard95a]

Removing pulseaudio seems to solve a number of problems. What I'm wondering, now that I've done it myself, is if I have created any. I rely on properly functioning sound not just so Skype can have a ring device besides my USB headset, but so twinkle can find any audio devices at all.

[laceration]

Thanks Ireneshusband. I just did a clean install of Lucid and you solved a problem for me. I streamlined your steps though:

1. Turn PulseAudio autospawn off, normally: $ echo "autospawn = no" > ~/.pulse/client.conf
2. Kill PulseAudio: $ killall pulseaudio
3. Quit and restart Skype.
4. Go to the Skype sound device options, where your devices should now be exposed; Choose something.(May not be necessary as Skype might remember what was previously selected)
5. Relaunch PulseAudio: $ pulseaudio -D

Problem is you need to do this after every reboot. Has anyone figured out how to make this stick across reboots? I tried doing sound w/o pulse but could not find a volume control for the panel that would work.

[mdurham]

Thanks Ireneshusband. I just did a clean install of Lucid and you solved a problem for me. I streamlined your steps though:

1. Turn PulseAudio autospawn off, normally: $ echo "autospawn = no" > ~/.pulse/client.conf
2. Kill PulseAudio: $ killall pulseaudio
3. Quit and restart Skype.
4. Go to the Skype sound device options, where your devices should now be exposed; Choose something.(May not be necessary as Skype might remember what was previously selected)
5. Relaunch PulseAudio: $ pulseaudio -D

Problem is you need to do this after every reboot. Has anyone figured out how to make this stick across reboots? I tried doing sound w/o pulse but could not find a volume control for the panel that would work.

How about starting from a script that does all this before starting skype, would that work?
I can't believe it's so hard to use my usb phone with skype. I've seen so many people say they have removed Pulse from their system, I wonder why the devs continue with what appears to be a useless package.
Anyway, thanks for the idea.
Cheers, Mike

[laceration]

Mike,

Pulse is the sound server, while Alsa works w/ the hardware layer. So Pulse supposedly gives you sound control per each app. To me it doesn't seen to do that much but add complexity to the system. But I think the blame here should be probably be with Skype. From the Skype readme:

* If you have a normal sound card, we recommend using the Default sound device for now. Sound output to hw: specific or plughw: specific devices may not work for all sound cards, or may result in single-channel playback or loss of sound mixing support on your system.

I rarely reboot my computer. When I do, since I have autospawn off and pulse unchecked in Startup Applications, all I have to do is this at the cli:

$ pulseaudio -D

but I couldn't resist I wrote a startup script.
Save it as /usr/local/bin/startpulse
then do this

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/startpulse

Add the script to your Startup Applications

here is the script:

#!/bin/bash
# Starts pulseaudio after testing to see if skype has already started
# pulse should be unchecked in Startup Applications
# pulse autospawn should be turned off. Do it like this:
# $ echo "autospawn = no" > ~/.pulse/client.conf
# see following link to see why this would be useful
# http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1416539
# # requires libnotify-bin for the notification
######################
test4skype(){
if [[ $i -lt 6 ]]
then
    if [[ $(pgrep skype | wc -l) -gt 0 ]]
    then
        pulseaudio -D
    else
        let i=($i+1)
        sleep 3
        test4skype
    fi
else
notify-send "Pulseaudio failed to start. Start by \"pulseaudio -D\" at the cli"
fi
}
i=0
test4skype
kill $$