Re: pulseaudio related problems....
On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 08:57:53AM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On 02/17/2014 08:37 AM, Chow Loong Jin wrote:
> > It might just be that DDs/"computer experts" just have more customized setups
> > that break in interesting ways when effort isn't spent porting the configuration
> > changes to a new system. What follows is "$new_thing sucks because $feature in
> > $old_thing that I customized half a decade ago and forgot about doesn't work. If
> > I, a DD/'computer expert' can't get it working, how could it ever be suitable
> > for a layman?"
>
> Exactly what I have been thinking all the time.
No, I don't buy that argument. It is based on the incorrect assumption
that all computer experts want to configure *every* part of their
system.
I'll buy that many experts do more configuring than other people, and
yes, in some cases that might result in the defaults no longer doing
what they should be doing. But given the number of people who seem to
have taken the step of going "sound isn't working, oh pulseaudio is
installed, let's throw it out", I doubt *all* of these have been
customizing their sound in minute detail. After all, let's face it, not
all computer experts are audiophiles.
> And I find the argument "all DDs are computer experts, so if they
> can't get it working it must be broken" a particularly bad one.
Granted.
But I'd like to make a few observations:
- I didn't even know there was a way to configure pulseaudio. I have had
cases of pulseaudio being installed without me knowing that was the
case, when I did a few obvious things like running "dpkg -l" on some
relevant packages, and not seeing any configuration files; so that
didn't get me to the right place.
- alsamixer is a fairly low-level mixer tool written specifically for
alsa. When pulseaudio is installed, however, the default mixer visible
in alsamixer is the single pulse slider. While it's possible to select
the 'hardware' alsa mixer (with F6), the fact that really
ALSA-specific tools don't even really manage ALSA anymore (by default)
is confusing.
- If the low-level driver does the right thing (in this case, produce
audio) while the magic layer on top does not, then the magic layer on
top is a menace. Whether the layer on top has good reasons for making
guesses or not does not matter; if it does a worse job than the
low-level driver, clearly something is wrong.
It has been my experience that pulse has in fact done a worse job at
getting things to Just Work(TM) on the hardware that I own.
[...]
--
This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space.
If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you
will not go to space today.
-- http://xkcd.com/1133/
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