[ubuntu-za] Sound & OpenOffice questions

[Brenton Edgar Scott]

David Robert Lewis (ethnopunk) wrote:
> SecretCode wrote:
>   
>> snip
>>     
>>> The Problem is clearly PulseAudio and NOT ALSA.
>>>
>>>    
>>>     
>>>       
>> Er, yes. PulseAudio not ALSA. Sorry!
>>
>>   
>>     
>
> There is a known bug in Alsa which affects 9.10. Fixing it entails 
> upgrading to the latest alsa binaries. I haven't tried this yet, because 
> it involves removing pulesaudio in a very complicated operation. But 
> most of the conversation as far as I can ascertain, has focused on this 
> issue.
>
> http://monespaceperso.org/blog-en/2009/10/29/upgrade-alsa-1-0-21-on-ubuntu-karmic-koala-9-10/
>
> If you think pulseaudio is the problem, why do you say this?
>
>
> Regards
> DRL
>
>   
I believe it's the base are packages provided with 9.10 the problem - no 
asoundconfig for one - it got removed in 9.10. It's also nearly 
impossible to configure away from PulseAudio in Ubuntu - it's just 
integrated and relied upon that much. So clearly if any problem does 
arise with sound, the only culprit left would be PulseAudio.

Don't get me wrong, PulseAudio comes with loads of advantages that takes 
some doing in ALSA or OSS, but the only really bad thing about it is 
it's range of support  for devices and it's over sensitivity to changes 
on your system. ALSA for example only uses sample range, which is 
normally 48Khz for audio - everything gets upmixed to it. This can badly 
effect the audio of a file that was encoded at say 30Khz (most ringtones 
mp3's) and even effects most normal mp3's and ogg's encoded at 44.1Khz. 
PulseAudio on the other hand has a dynamic range and tends to adjust 
itself to the audio it's playing - even better, you can play the music 
through remote ssh connection!

I'm not saying PulseAudio sucks and that everybody should go to the 
extreme I did and switch ALSA. What I'm saying is that if PulseAudio 
works fine for you, then stick with it. If not, then you can always 
consider switching to ALSA or OSS - that's the wonderful thing about 
Linux - you always have a choice - if one thing doesn't work for you, 
there is a couple of other options that most likely will.

-- Brenton