Fedora sound nightmare (Pulseaudio)

[Dimi Paun]

On Thu, 2008-03-13 at 18:29 +0000, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > Audacious on the other hand, behaves like this:
> >   * if output is set to ALSA:default, it will go to my headphones
> >   * if output is set to PulseAudio, it will stutter like crazy
> 
> That might just be Audacious' plugin sucking as well. Tried with
> something like Totem or Rhythmbox that uses the (well-tested)
> GStreamer plugin from PA upstream?

Yes, I do. In fact, in desperation I've installed anything pulse
I could find out there:
[root at dimi ~]# yum list '*pulse*'
Installed Packages
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i386             1.0.15-2.fc8           installed       
pulseaudio.i386                          0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-core-libs.i386                0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-esound-compat.i386            0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-libs.i386                     0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-libs-glib2.i386               0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-libs-zeroconf.i386            0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-module-bluetooth.i386         0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-module-gconf.i386             0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-module-jack.i386              0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-module-lirc.i386              0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-module-x11.i386               0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-module-zeroconf.i386          0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       
pulseaudio-utils.i386                    0.9.8-5.fc8            installed       

But as I explained, the gstreamer plugin for PA would just
output the sound to my USB headphones, not the system speakers.

> >   * if output is set to ALSA:hw:1,0 it will go to the system
> speakers
> 
> 1) Is the ALSA Pulseaudio plugin installed?

Yes, see above.

> 2) Did you try selecting another default output in pavucontrol?
> (output devices->right-click, select the default, yes the UI sucks)

Funny enough, I didn't know where to get it. It wasn't installed on
my system, I installed anything and everything I could find with
'pulse' in name, no luck.

Google, etc, now I discovered that it's in a package called pavucontrol.
Really nice name. How could mere mortals figure this one out? The naming
leaves a lot to be desired...

> 3) Did you try running pulseaudio by itself on the command-line to see
> whether it prints out any errors?
> 
> That last one seems like the first thing you should have done before
> blaming PulseAudio...

Maybe, but hacking pulseaudio on the command line is not something
that pops into my mind, I'll admit.

-- 
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.