Audacity, F9, and sound systems

[Joe Smith]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> ...  Here's a Test Update for F9 waiting to be pushed into the
> updates-testing repository: ...

Sweet!

I can't test inputs ATM, but playback works perfectly on F9, with either 
the "ALSA: default" or "ALSA: pulse" settings.

The three other available settings
   ALSA: HDA NVidia: ALC861 Digital (hw:0,1)
   ALSA: iec958
   ALSA: spdif
don't give any audio output.

The last one, I understand. The other two are mysterious.

I've had problems fairly consistently with previous versions (from the 
F9 repos) not finding a suitable output device. It seemed to be some 
conflict with media players in the browser (Flash player maybe?): if I 
shut down the browser and restarted audacity, it would show a different 
set of output devices and I could usually find one that worked.

Can anyone point to a good overview of how the various pieces of 
Fedora's current audio support fit together? Especially pulseaudio and 
gstreamer, and how to configure/control them.

I can't even guess how to use the various mixers and audio settings, 
because I don't have a clear idea what does what. I realize things are 
still evolving--maybe it's clearer in F10.

<Joe