[SOLVED] Multiple Sound Solution (ALSA w Pulseaudio)

[sharad.sharma]

hey.. thanks for the information on those files
I switched from one user to mine and played Amarok.It said xine could not initialize audio drivers.No other application was running at that time apart from Pidgin.Then I checked if others could play any sound but they couldn't.
I could not even open System->Preferences->Sound.
Then a restart solved that.
I didn't check pavucontrol. I'll do that and report here with the details the next time it happens.

[Xhoonet]

Hi I followed your guide and got all my media players audio to work simultaneously, which is cool, but now I got no sound from Firefox/Youtube!

Any pointers thanks!

[markbuntu]

Start up the Pulse Audio Volume Control. Look in the playback section and see if there is a listing for more than one device in Output Devices.

Start up a you tube video and
see if you get a listing in Playback like this:

ALSA plug-in[firefox]:Alsa Playback

If you do, right click on it and select move stream and move it to another output device.

If that stream is flickering on and off, you probably have flash 9 and need to get:

libflashsupport

from the repositories to get it to work properly. I highly reccomend trying to find flash10b. It solves a lot of problems with flash audio playback. If you get flash10b, get rid of libflashsupport, it will cause problems with flash10. Do not get flash10b2, it is very buggy at last report.

[Xhoonet]

Thanks it worked like a charm! I couldn't find the pulse audio thingy -another thread told me it is called "pavucontrol" and the flash flickered just like you said -installing libflashsupport it did the trick! Much appreciated!

[markbuntu]

If you followed my guide, the Pulse Audio Volume Control should be in Applications/Sound and Video. If you do not see it there, it is probably hidden and you can unhide it by using System/Preferences/Main Menu. It is a handy item for checking your sound players and adjusting their individual volumes.

[Xhoonet]

...and you are right, I kept going to System/Prefs of course it was not there

If you followed my guide, the Pulse Audio Volume Control should be in Applications/Sound and Video. If you do not see it there, it is probably hidden and you can unhide it by using System/Preferences/Main Menu. It is a handy item for checking your sound players and adjusting their individual volumes.

[eye208]

*also, regarding the above post from eye208: removing ubuntu-desktop just to get sound working, and disabling system sounds altogether, doesn't seem like the best solution.

Ubuntu 7.10 had no system sounds at all, because ESD was not included in the standard install. Most people didn't even notice. In Ubuntu 8.04 there are only two system sounds enabled by default: startup and shutdown. If you can't live without these, my solution is obviously not for you. However, my solution does make Skype work properly. The choice is yours.

There may be a way to make Gnome use ESD for system sounds again, but I didn't bother looking for it. My solution is the least intrusive one because it doesn't require editing system config files. And you can quickly revert to the old setup if required.

If you go to re-install ubuntu-desktop afterwards, it simply re-installs pulseaudio again, along with all those games i'd removed, etc.

Umm yes, that's the whole point of ubuntu-desktop: to provide a quick way to restore the default setup. Otherwise we would not need it in the first place. In case you are suggesting to remove pulseaudio by hand without using the package manager: That would be wrong. It would leave the system in an inconsistent state, and subsequent updates to pulseaudio would most likely break it. Not recommended!

[markbuntu]

Your solution is is not a solution, it is a convenient work around that voids a lot of what the upgrade to Hardy is about. There are other solutions to your problems, they may involve a little more work, but they do not remove a big piece of the future of Ubuntu and of linux in general since many distributions have or are moving to pulseaudio.

Look at it this way, the entire linux community is moving to pulseaudio and you are missing the bus because you found some quick and easy way to get your skype working without even bothering to look at the wiki.

http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup

[eye208]

Look at it this way, the entire linux community is moving to pulseaudio

No, it isn't.

Take a look at Kubuntu 8.04 and realize that PulseAudio is not a part of it. So far PulseAudio is only replacing ESD in GNOME, nothing else. It is far from replacing Jack, and it will never replace ALSA. In fact it needs ALSA.

This is not just about Skype. If you take a look at sound applications on Linux, you'll realize that almost all of them can talk to ALSA directly. So far I have come across only one app (Second Life) with buggy ALSA support, but it works fine with ESD. However it does not work with Pulse which was advertised as a "drop-in replacement for ESD". Go figure.

It makes perfect sense to ditch PulseAudio until the developers make it work with everything out of the box. So far PulseAudio has achieved almost nothing. It did not introduce mixing of multiple streams; ALSA could do that anyway. It did not simplify using sound on Linux. It has only caused trouble and confusion for the majority of its users; just take a look at the polls and the bug trackers. Removing it from the system is the solution.

[markbuntu]

The following distributions either have moved or are moving to pulse audio:

* ArchLinux - has a nice Wiki page
* Debian
* Ubuntu (Enabled by default in Ubuntu 8.04.)
* Fedora (Enabled by default in Core 8)
* Gentoo
* Lunar Linux
* Mandriva (Enabled by default in Mandriva 2008.1)
* OpenEmbedded
* OpenSUSE Factory
* FreeBSD

That is over 90% of the installed linux base.

I have pulseaudio working just fine with my three sound cards and USB mic. I have even got pulse and jack to play nice together though on different sound cards. I will be experimenting later this weekend on a permanent solution to getting pulse to play through jack and use the same sound card in my UbuntuStudio installation. I have got pulse to play through both of the sound cards I use at the same time through a virtual device fairly easily. This is something I was never able to figure out with alsa, oss, or ESD.

Anyway, I know how you feel, pulse was driving me crazy for a while but I have got it figured out and now I am sharing what I learned and that is what this thread is about, figuring it out, not running away.

I have just updated the OP and there is a lot more information about how to use pulse and links to the pa wikis and other places of interest. I have added a section for jack that will be expanded as I uncover more information that I thnk will be useful. There is a link to getting skype and other troublesome applications working with pulseaudio.