Re: pulseaudio related problems....

[Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob@debian.org>]

I'm few weeks late to join this discussion but anyway I'd like to share a 
bit of my experience with pulseaudio...

On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 21:52:24 John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> The problem is that many people who complain about PulseAudio issues
> are often prejudiced about it in the first place

IMHO it's hard to acquire negative bias towards something without 
experience. For instance I didn't know about pulseaudio until it broke my 
audio configuration after accidental installation by dependency.

For years my audio just worked with ALSA on KDE. One day after reboot I 
found that my 5.1 speaker configuration somehow reverted to "stereo". I 
rarely reboot so I accumulated package upgrades for weeks or even months. I 
started to check mixer (kmix), Phonon audio backend, rolled back some 
packages, re-installed ALSA while logging off and on every time. Of course 
nothing worked. Many hours (if not days) later I found that merely presence 
of "pulseaudio" causing that devastating effect. Then for hours I tried to 
configure pulseaudio for 5.1 speaker configuration and failed miserably not 
being able to figure out how to adjust speakers volume by channel and not 
all together. (With 5.1 speakers it may be handy to raise volume of central 
speaker to hear speech clearly while making front speakers quieter; rear 
speaker may be too quiet if you're far away from them etc.). You can blame 
me for obvious ignorance but I gave up back then after spending too much 
time on this.

Another unpleasant situation that I had with pulseaudio happened on one of 
the hp/compaq (or dell) boxes that are so common in Australia. Pulseaudio 
played everything through little speaker integrated to computer case while 
headphone output remained silent. Again (withing reasonable time frame) I 
failed to find solution to this problem with pulseaudio while ALSA/kmix 
allowed me to configure audio in seconds.

Just few weeks ago on up-to-date Debian "testing" I tried installing 
pulseaudio (in hope that situation improved) only to notice that it made 
audio lagging and crackly. Guilty as charged, once again I had no patience 
to troubleshooting pulseaudio so I just uninstalled it to continue enjoying 
smooth audio experience as it was before pulseaudio.

All three incidents occurred on computers with integrated Intel audio 
controller(s) which seems to be the most commonly used ones.

The above experiences did not put me to pulseaudio fan club. I'm sure 
pulseaudio was developed to address some problems (that I did not 
experience) and quite frankly ability to play audio over the network is 
awesome. 
But still as far as I'm aware pulseaudio is the only package that  
often delivers misfeature and makes audio configuration unnecessary 
complicated not to mention that it adds extra CPU overhead. Typically 
pulseaudio installed without tools like "pavucontrol" or "pasystray" which 
makes its configuration difficult. Finally IMHO lack of information like 
introduction to pulseaudio and hints to related software in 
"/usr/share/doc/pulseaudio/README.Debian" makes pulseaudio quite hostile to 
users without prior experience. 

It would be nice if pulseaudio (just) worked for everyone but we're not even 
close to that.


> such that they aren't
> actually interested in having the problem fixed but rather just want
> to get rid of it and uninstall it. Trying to debug the problem in such
> cases is very difficult.

I found it hard to define the problem with pulseaudio. Invasive behaviour  
or lack of prompt about system-wide audio backend takeover or disappeared 
hardware mixer or lack of intro (hints) in README.Debian or need for 
additional software which is not installed by default (any/all of the 
above)...

It is easy to report bugs for packages that you want/need or 
understand how they should work. I can't blame those who don't need 
pulseaudio for not reporting bugs...


> > And to the extent that Debian users are unhappy with pulseaudio as a
> > default, it's because others have been trying to blame the user for the
> > problems instead of constructively engaging to *fix* pulseaudio.
> 
> I think the reservations are mutual. If your attention as a user is
> "I'm too lazy to take a second to look into how PulseAudio actually
> works and what box I have to check.", you can't expect us on the
> other side to be happy to help as well.

That's not laziness or even lack of curiosity. If "pulseaudio" ate a lot of 
your time that you spent trying to fix your (previously working) audio setup 
then you might not be too motivated to troubleshoot it especially if 
uninstalling it is the easiest solution to troubles. Few people would have 
enough patience to continue... Once uninstalled troubleshooting ends and 
negative experience might discourage further attempts. Perhaps most of us 
have other priorities after all...

Lack of bug reports is not a problem. As far as I can see there are nearly 
200 bugs reported against pulseaudio and this number is growing. Lack of 
manpower seems to be the real problem so it would be nice if those who like 
pulseaudio would put a little more effort to help maintaining it.

-- 
Best wishes,
 Dmitry Smirnov
 GPG key : 4096R/53968D1B

---

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong.
        -- H. L. Mencken