Is PulseAudio Really That Bad?

I agree, I’m using for some months and never got any problem, after installing what you said. And it adds great flexibility.

Quite honestly, I’ve had no issues with PulseAudio. Mostly likely because my distro of choice, Linux Mint, installs padevchooser by default. I think it also helps to choose hardware that is solidly supported by your prefered Linux distribution.

[...] STX and both the Logitech Communicate Deluxe. Both work very well, plus thanks to help from the PulseAudio Device Chooser, the include mics are usable out of the box as [...]

I’ve had constant nightmares with Pulseaudio, but this nice little guide should help now that Jaunty has got its act together. Seriously though, PulseAudio has been a disaster. Audio *just worked* before.

icheyne: Should you still have issues with it, I have the cure

apt-get remove pulseaudio

From there, you can go old school if you wish to set the default soundcard because the GUI in Preferences>sound>sucks.

asoundconf list

then’

asoundconf set-default-card NAME-OF-CARD-ABOVE

Good luck. ;)

For help with the mic, not using Pulse, use the volume control. It’s rather limiting and not very useful anymore, but it still works.

[...] for sound, again, you should not have any problems. And with the addition of PulseAudio, you might actually find audio in Linux to be a really powerful [...]

PulseAudio will always be a solution in search of a problem.

I’ve used ArchLinux for quite some time, and after installing ESD and a desktop environment, audio just worked. But I recently switched to Linux Mint–an “easier” distribution–due to some technical difficulties with my optical drive at the time…and with it, everything has worked great -except- PulseAudio, which had decided to only let my headphone jacks put out sound, and then disabled even them when I went from GNOME to Xfce.

Honestly, who really -needs- the ability to play sound over a network? That’s the only advantage it has over ESD, and as far as I can see, that capability’s just a toy for IT guys who should really be doing their jobs instead.

Let’s recap:
- No advantage over ESD for most users.
- Doesn’t even work on many sound cards, despite ESD working just fine on them. (Word to the wise: Even a system with very common hardware that’s been around for a year might not work with Pulse.)
- Many good applications are still incompatible with it, and require various hacks to solve this problem.
- Has been known to crash randomly and often. I thought Linux was supposed to crash less than Windows?

You might not see the problem with PulseAudio, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

google “remove pulse audio” - 4,030,000 results

Yes Pulse Is really that bad and should only have ever been a user app for the very few who need it.

Most don’t need it, they need better asound and alsa configuration. That would solve the headphone jack, multi-channel speaker, etc. issues. Volume control belongs in the app. I shouldn’t have to run a seperate app to change volume. It doesn’t work the way many want with a remote control, only the focused app should be muted or have it’s volume changed by the remote. If you want to mute the whole machine that can easily be done with a remote control key/button assignment.

The pulse argument that programmers don’t know how to program sound “so they should use a poorly written buggy software layer and never learn how to program sound” is counter-productive to generating better linux software.

Concerning multiple streams why not use jack, the both pro audio and regular users would be using the same tool and benefit from each others knowledge. Linux distributions should never add code to the base systems for the masses to compensate for manufacturers of shoddy hardware. Inexpensive sound chips can easily do hardware mixing, force the other manufacturers to provide better sound chips. Why load the cpu for something that can be done simply and inexpensively in hardware?

Pulse has does nothing but degrade linux sound for the majority of users. This is not the programmers fault in coding. The fault is the campaign to include a buggy product in the base code and the distributions “me too” attitude to follow, coupled with this drive to stupidity to make everything “under the hood” like windows. You really can have the best of both worlds, a gui config tool that explains the conf file, manages revisions and testing of different settings. Distributions could share working solutions of conf files. We all do this by hand now but if conf’s were treated like themes we could all benefit from the poor soul that struggled and got it working.

In the current releases of Ubuntu 9.04, Fedora 11, and Mandriva 2009.1 pulse is still not working properly except for a handful of people.

will remove pulse solve a probleme with no sound on flash (or a huge noise sometimes)???

lets put it like this …

PULSEAUDIO is hurting linux!

on most systems i have seen problems with pulse.
from strange latency issues to instand system crashes

it needs to GO … NOW!
drop it. please.

Will never happen. Why? Because for those who have sane system setups, realize how to use it, there is nothing better. It is the only thing out there providing a level playing field with individual application control from the audio perspective.

Don’t like it, remove it. ;)

No one out there is going to mind.

some distos are making pulseaudio a dependency for many packages. so removing is no longer possible in a normal way. it is being forced up on people. and killing their pc’s .
disabling it is still possible.

sane setups? would never use pulse.

but just alsa dmix ,jack etc

greets.

hello . well im new to ubuntu . but i have HDA intel - stac92xx. well thats what it says i have for my devices . i did what you said above to the best of my . ability . i think that i got it , but im still not getting any sound . on pulse audio manager . devices tab . under sinks is ; asla_output.pci_8086_293e_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0 .

then lower than that is #486 i think its due to the song im trying to play

sources are about the same as sinks . but the endinds 0.monitor and alsa_capture_0 ..

when i go to show volume meter there moving but still no sound … im really new to ubuntu only had it for two days now . ill give more info if needed just let me know how and were to get it . and ill do my best to get it .. thank you for your help

I’ve got a Creative Audigy (CA0106) card.in my PC and a Sigmatel (STAC92xx) in my laptop. Both of them run Jaunty.

Pulseaudio works decently in the laptop, but NOT fine. I don’t know if you tested some Alsa-based game (i.e. powermanga): delays an problems with synchronization. The same for apps running through Wine: they worked perfectly in previous Pulseaudio-free distros.

What about the PC? A real Nightmare. There’s no way to convince Pulseaudio to work together Firefox/Flash… not to say the disaster that Pulseaudio causes to Skype. Yeah, proprietary software but… it worked like a charm in previous distros! Why the hardware support gets worse and worse as software versions advance? Furthermore, you can only partially disable Pulseaudio, but it is still on the road like a dead cow. Alsa can’t get the full control of your audio hardware so you can’t redirect channels by the .asoundrc configuration. Then, you have to choose between the poor Pulseaudio performance or a good audio support without specific (and important) features of your audio hardware (namely 5.1 surround). Yeah, you were lucky because of your a priori hardware setup but, what about the rest of the world?

Sounds like a real sound card issue to me. I have no less than four currently installed 9.04 running pulseaudio, tested eight and all of them are fine using stuff like Frets on Fire, Audacity, etc.

Firefox and Flash 10.x - could not work better - perfection. Clearly, you either have a very Linux incompatible sound card or you are using Pulse out of the box without the benefit of the padevchooser. Did I mention Skype became even easier with my upgrade to the latest Ubuntu? I can now set the whole thing to Pulse and do my work from padevchooser. Place a test call, tab over to Recording and make whatever soundcard you want to be the default. It’s just not that difficult…

And as for not being able to take control of your 5.1channels, there maybe issues with 5.1 specifically.

Opening up system monitor and just killing pulse will likely remedy that for those rare occasions when one needs a real 5.1 experience…which again, is really going to be rare for 99% of the world. It’s just a feature. Easy to remove. I kill pulse with a simple script when I need JACK for very specific, rarely used applications.

BTW, give this a whirl, it might help.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4751258&postcount=11

Hi Matt….

No, I have a multi OS installation in this PC and, sadly, I have to say that the sound card works OK in Windows. And the problem is not only with Skype: the microphone configuration issue is the same for every application in Jaunty, even after a fresh installation, no matter how much you mess with the infamous pavdevchooser; the only way to solve that problem was disabling Pulseaudio.

I have no personal problem with any Pulseaudio developer… I’m trapped in the third word wasteland I come from, so I don’t know who they are ;) … the problem is that this sort of decisions put the people far away from Linux. The architectural beauty of the concept becomes a whim if the real thing doesn’t work. Tell your father or girlfriend that he/she has to “kill Pulseaudio” to start a game or to watch a movie with a decent audio playing…

Oh, and yes, I have channel redirection with Pulseaudio, but the point is that you have your subwoofer working… but playing stuttered, delayed, noisy audio

Sorry to hear about your problems. I do have a subwoofer myself, works fantastic. No static here or off noise here.

I would again point out that in a multitude of setups I have tested with Pulse, there is no problem to be had. Not to say that with one or two select sound cards won’t present problems, just that with most of them, things work fine as my own findings have demonstrated to myself personally. :)

Hi again,

Just to say that my Linux sound nightmare finally ended. How come? Well, I have to say exactly what you expect me to say: completely remove Pulseaudio.

Of course, I was wrong: it is possible to uninstall Pulseaudio in Jaunty. I misinterpreted the partial solution given here

http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/ubuntu-904-jaunty-keeping-the-beast-pulseaudio-at-bay/

But I tested a solution for a previous Ubuntu version and, surprisingly, after months of hacking, it worked for Jaunty with some little modifications. For those interested, the link is here:

http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/ubuntu-904-jaunty-keeping-the-beast-pulseaudio-at-bay/

I have only a little advice to say G’bye: don’t convince yourself of anything if your only support to your beliefs is your own perception… it could be a delusion. Learn to listen is a must in this short life.

Hugo and all,

While I was finally able to duplicate the problems you were having with Pulseaudio and Skype, I still have not had problems with other apps. Sorry, but despite seeing a LOT of supporting evidence in what you all are saying (meaning you are not alone), I cannot duplicate those problems with Pulse except for VoIP apps. There, I can finally see the 100% CPU eating frustrating with audio dropping out.

Again, I do hear you. But if I cannot duplicate the “other problems”, often times with some people (alsa confs hacked to death), not much I can do there for ya.

Would not consider personal experience with a multitude of PCs a delusion, rather a reality based on HOURS upon HOURS of testing throughout the years.

Just working on Pulse alone, I have likely clocked over a month straight collectively. I have tested every hack, tweak, etc. And yes, once can get rid of Pulseaudio - sure. But I will never do this as it ALWAYS ties up your sound card which makes the switch meaningless in the first place.

All of this said, I have found the solution with skype-static-oss. As pulse has tested perfectly for me with Flash 10, Totem Movie Player, Mplayer, VLC, etc, I would again say that just as my experience with people working with Wifi in Linux, they are over-complicating. I have seen it happen again and again, each time people swearing that _____ just sucked. ;)