Audacity, F9, and sound systems

[Kevin Kofler]

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

Those are really the same device (the PulseAudio ALSA plugin). :-)

> 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.

PulseAudio already uses the hardware, so you can't access it directly, only
through PulseAudio.

> 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.

This sort of conflicts is exactly what PulseAudio is designed to solve, but
it only works if everything goes through PulseAudio, you can't access the
hardware directly and expect no conflicts over it.

        Kevin Kofler