Which sound mixer do I use? SBLive! or Pulse?

[timzak]

I'm not quite sure I understand everything about this new PulseAudio in Hardy, but I noticed in my Volume Control Preferences that it is set to SBLive! [CT4620] (Alsa mixer). There is also an option for:
Playback: ALSA PCM on front:0 (ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer)

Do I need to set it for the 2nd option in order to be using PulseAudio? Not sure here what this should be set to.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thx.

[kostkon]

You can select your mixer in System -> Preferences -> Sound. Currently , it should be set to auto, and that means that you are using PulseAudio for your mixing, which is a software mixer.

If you want to use the hardware mixer then set your playback to Alsa. The Alsa driver has very support for the hardware mixer of Creative Live! with the ability for simultaneous 100+ channels without any CPU usage.

PulseAudio offers good things like volume levels for every app and many other cool stuff.

The Alsa driver for Live! offers good hardware mixing.

You decide!!