I'd like to get rid of pulseaudio but ...

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:08:37AM -0700, john wendel wrote:
> Kevin Kofler wrote:
> >Steve Underwood wrote:
> >>I thought most people wanted to get rid of pulseaudio.
> >
> >Only because people like you perpetuate some stupid myth that PulseAudio is
> >evil.
> >
> >>Its a very troublesome program with poor documentation, and little output
> >>to help you resolve problems. If you get it working it seems to offer you
> >>nothing you didn't have before you had pulseaudio.
> >
> >It makes sound just work, without apps fighting for the sound device (or
> >multiple incompatible sound servers all trying to "fix" this fighting for
> >the sound device). No more annoyances like games failing to play sound
> >because some GUI event sound was still being played when they tried opening
> >the sound device. (I've seen, or rather heard, that happen way too often in
> >pre-PulseAudio times.)
> >
> >Most sound cards don't do mixing in hardware. A few do support it, but the
> >ALSA driver doesn't. Only few sound cards can do it and have ALSA support
> >for it. So PulseAudio is a mixing solution which works for everyone.
> >
> >        Kevin Kofler
> >
> 
> Strange, I've never had a sound card that didn't have a hardware mixer. 
> And the on-board Intel hd audio that I'm using now does too. I don't 
> think PulseAudio is evil, it just doesn't bring anything to the party.
> 

You're mixing up things :-)

"Mixer" usually means the device/application you use to control volume level settings.

In this context "hardware mixing" meant mixing up multiple audio streams
(from different applications) and all of them playing at once.

Your on-board Intel hd audio cannot mix audio streams in hardware.. I think.
Some Creative cards can do that.

-- Pasi