On 18-07-13 06:23, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > On 07/18/2013 01:00 AM, Wouter Verhelst wrote: >> They're both APIs that applications can use to produce audio. What do >> you mean, it doesn't make sense? >> >> Of course they're not the same thing; I get that. That's not what I'm >> saying. But as far as "producing audio" is concerned, they can both do >> that. > > PulseAudio is not a stand-alone thing, it doesn't work without an > actual abstraction layer for the sound hardware like ALSA. > > When you compare PA, you should compare it with artsd, esd, dmix > or JACK, but not the low-level layer below.
No, you compare it against "the alternative", whatever that is. To me, "the alternative" is bare alsa. And in my opinion, PulseAudio is not an improvement. >>>> PulseAudio piles another layer of possible failures on top of a kernel >>>> driver, and hides most of the audio mixer for no particularly good >>>> reason other than "it might confuse the poor user". It just doesn't >>>> make >>>> any sense to me. >>> >>> Some sound cards expose two dozens or more level adjustments which most >>> people don't even understand. >> >> I've never seen a setup where there wasn't a "master" mixer. > > Which often doesn't help if some other adjustment has been turned off > or set to a very low level. If that is the case, usually it's fairly easy to spot. [...] >>> I don't think it's a bad idea in general >>> to clean that up and make the whole interface more consistent and >>> easier to understand. >> >> Not contesting that. It's just that every time pulseaudio got pulled >> onto my system, my audio stopped doing what it was supposed to. That's >> not what I would expect from something that's supposed to make things >> "easier to understand". > > Could you please stop coming up with anecdotes and actually describe > some real situations where PulseAudio messed up due to a bug? That would require me to investigate something I don't like, when a working solution is simply "apt-get remove pulseaudio" For clarity, since I have a feeling you may be misunderstanding me: I'm not saying we should ditch PulseAudio, and I'm not saying we should change our defaults. However, I personally think PulseAudio is an annoying piece of software that does more harm than it does good, and I'd hate it if we were to end up with a system where removing PulseAudio is no longer possible. >>> However, if you have more than one sound device, PulseAudio is a >>> blessing. For example, my video card has an HDMI output. When >>> I hook up my PC to my television via HDMI, I want the sound from >>> VLC to go through HDMI rather than through my sound card. It's >>> a matter of opening a preferences pane, change the output device >>> to HDMI and I am done. >> >> That's something you can do with plain alsa, too. > > I have no doubt that you can do it in ALSA as well. The question is, > however, whether it involves a 20-hour heart surgery as opposed to > just opening a panel with PA and changing the default output for > a specific application. Oh come on, don't be ridiculous. It's really not that hard. [...] >>> How do I do that with just plain Alsa without using a text editor? >> >> In VLC: >> >> ctrl-p, go to the audio tab, and select the correct device in the >> "output" frame. >> >> That's not VLC-specific, FWIW; most applications that can do alsa output >> have a way to select the output device. There are exceptions, of course, >> but those applications are either immature or buggy. > > Which means there is no canonical way to do it, and, like you said not > every application supports such an option. I also called those exceptions "either immature or buggy". They're far and few between. > Do I really elaborate why a central control panel to configure that is > the superior solution instead of having to figure out for each and > every application how to do it? Again, there's no reason why such a control panel can't be a simple frontend to an asoundrc file. >> Even so, there's no reason why there can't be a tool to edit an asoundrc >> file... but you don't really need that, in my experience, since most >> applications allow you to choose the correct output device. > > Again, *most* is not all and no, I don't want my mother to open up > a text editor and having to write some obscure text lines in order > for her to get the audio on her television after she connected it > to her television. She doesn't have to. > Do you know how hard that is to explain something > on the phone to someone who is not a computer aficionado? I used to work on an ISP helpdesk when I was in my last year of college... >>> What do I do when I want my Skype input going through the USB >>> webcam's microphone and the audio of Skype through my bluetooth >>> headset instead of my primary sound card? >> >> You select the correct input and output devices in skype... > > Ha! I am pretty sure you haven't used Skype and ALSA extensively > in the past. One of my customers used skype pretty extensively for communication with their other site across the ocean, so, actually, I have. > You just don't select the proper output and input devices in > Skype. You actually have to go to ALSA mixer and tell ALSA > that you actually want to *record* from the microphone > connected to the front panel or the back panel. Otherwise the > signal is just passed through the sound card meaning you can hear > your voice but Skype does not record it. "buggy or immature" Anyway, EOT for me. -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51e795f0.9000...@debian.org