The forst reason Pulse is broken for me is Pulse adds a new requirement for timing information that was not needed when I just ran with ALSA. This timing information I guess is always required by Pulse but only needed to implement features I do not want to use. It appears my card or it’s driver cannot provide this information.

The second reason I consider Pulse broken is that I bought a sound card that does something called hardware mixing that allows my sound card to blend sounds from multiple programs in the hardware of the card itself so my CPU doesn’t have to. It like how an accelerated video card does work in rendering an image so the CPU doesn’t need to. Pulse does not support the feature of the hardware even though ALSA does. Pulse requires the extra load be put on the CPU. This is already on top of the extra load required just to have the Pulse Audio server in the loop. The developers of Pulse Audio of unilaterally declared such hardware obsolete and will never utilise it. I disagree with their judgement in this case.

The technical reasons behind why I’m broken may not interest you, but this knowledge and the stonewall stalemate between the developers that bug 440465 illustrates allows me to deduce that I and other like myself will likely never see the situation get fixed. Certainly not any time soon. So for me, I have to assume the fix is a distribution like Mandriva that makes the decision to use Pulse Audio a simple checkbox or a roll your own distribution like Gentoo.

It’s sad because Ubuntu otherwise looks nice and it’s based on Debian which is an excellent foundation. It’s also sad because Ubuntu is currently one of the most popular entrances to the Linux world for new Linux users. If a new user is unfortunate enough to hit one of these Pulse Audio problems and hits a stone wall like the one in 440465, that’s a terrible first impression that we’ll never get the opportunity to fix.

Oh well. Best of luck. I’m sure eventually this mess will get fixed. I just don’t see the developers as having the interest or will to address it in the near future. I’m glad you spoke up. The more people discuss problems like this, the more likely it is that it will get addressed sooner rather than later.

Edd

It would be remiss of me not to report that I just spent an hour on my daughter’s Karmic Gnome, removing all pulse audio configs and reinstalling pulseaudio. Pulseaudio is now working fine, including Amarok and her FM radio card. A manual way of “restore to default”.

What we need is an easy way to revert to ALSA when Pulesaudio does not work or even a simple “reset to default”, for whatever reason it is needed.

Perhaps a feature request or a brainstorm entry would be just as appropriate as bug reports.

Finally, as stated above – if you use KDE you do not need pulseaudio. A clean install of Kubuntu uses phonon and ALSA.

I would hope that PulseAudio would either be fixed (Evidence: it works in Mandriva, why can’t it work in Ubuntu) or be made an OPTION, for those who do wish to use it.

Like you, I have seen a number of PulseAudio bugs simply shifted to “wish list” or otherwise disposed of without a solution to the problems involved, including mine. In fact, the individuals involved never bothered to find out what the actual problem was, but continually referred to a separate problem.

The problem is simple. I’m not looking for perfect sound. Just sound that my card is capable of delivering – 5.1 Surround. In case anyone is wondering, that means:
1. Stereophonic separation of sound. You know, sound that can be distinguished as coming from one side or another. This is why recording studios use multiple microphones when recording symphonic music. This is why movie studios use multiple microphones when recording sound. This is why Dolby and others were invented.
2. Full frequency range. The human ear has amazing capabilities (even mine, despite the fact that I’ve got tinnitus). Large amounts of money have been spent on attempting to provide that range of frequencies to recordings.

PulseAudio, in Ubuntu, provides me with neither of those things. (NOTE: That’s PulseAudio in Ubuntu. If Mandriva can achieve it, then it’s not something that’s impossible to accomplish.) To me, a user, that means it’s broken in Ubuntu. (Again, a key word is “IN UBUNTU”) I’m not concerned with what happens in other distributions in this complaint. I’m not concerned with whether it’s an upstream problem, downstream problem, or overflowing stream problem. It’s a problem. Period.

What can be done about it? Well, the easiest thing for a distribution to do is to NOT make it default. Provide a method to choose whether or not to use it that someone new to Linux, or someone not “conversant in the arts”, would be able to perform. In other words, and I repeat: Do NOT make it default.

The easiest thing for ME to do is to look for another distribution that does NOT make it the default. This is not a choice that I would enter into flippantly, casually, or without due consideration. I have spent my time and energy advocating and supporting Ubuntu in my own way. I am not a programmer. I am not a developer. My knowledge and experience with Linux are limited. But I have been able to support Ubuntu in other ways – ways that have earned me the “recognition of my peers” in the form of Ubuntu membership. This is an honor and a responsibility, and not something that I would lightly walk away from. I would seriously like to see this situation solved and not carried on to the next release. But it’s not something I can do. I can only point out the problem and hope that it is honestly addressed.

As for fixing PulseAudio’s functionality, that is something that needs to be addressed by the programmers and developers involved with sound and with PulseAudio, either inside Ubuntu or outside. It’s not something over which I have any control. I do have control over what distribution I use. I likewise have control over where I place my energy and support. I would prefer to see a solution found within Ubuntu, and continue supporting it. But nothing compels me to continue supporting Ubuntu.

Does this make it plain to people?

I appreciate you posting this and I wish it could lead to a change, but I don’t see it. You can look at bug 440465 at https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/440465 starting at at least comment 13 and see that once again a bug was closed ‘working as designed’. I don’t see any progress likely to happen from the Ubuntu side any time soon. Frankly, I’m officially headed for the door. Do you still feel there’s something to hope for?

Edd

Your comment had been unapproved.

Is there some reason other than system packagers being dickheads that I should know about?

It is possible to get rid of PA, but they don’t make it easy.

Honestly, I’d live with it, if it worked, even if it is a nasty kludge that sucks up unnecessary resources, but every time I plugged in my USB headset, it redirected everything to it and the main speakers went dead. Then I tried using skype with the headset and that’s when I reached for the banhammer and smacked pulseaudio back to the foul pool it came from.

PulseAudio respawn issue:
gksudo gedit /etc/pulse/client.conf
then change:
; autospawn = yes
to:
autospawn = no

Running
ps aux | grep pulse
will show if pulseaudio is running. Then:
killall pulseaudio
will stop pulseaudio.

NOTE: You may have no sound for about a minute after this, not sure why.

For me, this breaks my +/- sound keys and System > Preferences > Sound says it is “Waiting for sound system to respond”. So I am using alsamixer in the terminal to control sound.

This is not perfect, and not a complete solution, but gets sound back when pulseaudio stops working.

I am with you here — I want a sound system that works, and if it does not work, I want to easily switch to alsa or oss4 or jack or phonon — I don’t want to have to fight the system.

I understand the need to get a system that is working and is casual user friendly, and Ubuntu have done some great work. But when it doesn’t work, when you want to switch out something (like the sound system), it should be possible to do.

Now, I know that the pulseaudio developers have said that Ubuntu has messed up the pulseaudio configuration. Pulseaudio *has* improved over the previous releases.

What I would like to see is pulseaudio being separate from ubuntu-desktop, and such that you can install whatever sound system you want. So that if there are issues with sound, it is easily resolvable.

Maybe it’s time to retry moving back to Debian.