Pulseaudio

From Alessandro's Wiki

Pulseaudio is a brand new sound server system for linux.

project website

On the Gentoo Wiki

from command line

* list devices/clients:
pactl list
# eselect esd list
Available ESounD implementations:
 [1]   ESounD original *
 [2]   PulseAudio
# eselect esd set 2

alsa emulation

  • file:/etc/asound.conf
pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}
#pcm.jackplug {
#    type plug
#    slave { pcm "jack" }
#}
#pcm.soundcard-hw {
#type hw
#card 0
#}
#
#
#pcm.!default {
#type pulse
#slave.pcm "soundcard"
#}
#
#pcm.soundcard {
#type pulse
#}
#
#
#ctl.soundcard-hw {
#type hw
#card 0
#}

network

server

/etc/pulse/default.pa

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1;192.168.0.0/16 load-module module-x11-publish load-module module-gconf

/etc/pulse/default.pa

load-module module-alsa-sink


client

/etc/pulse/client.conf

default-server = tcp:SERVER:4713


extensively

  • list me the packages actually using pulseaudio use flag:
equery hasuse pulseaudio
  • from how I've understood it, (I've been studying about several sound systems like oss,esd,alsa,sox specialized all in different branches of "the sound" and all are following the evolution of GNU projects)...

... Pulseaudio uses ALSA , down there, still taking care of the hardware layer. I got this quickly, as it looks pretty functional and I was speculating about alsa doing "to much stuff" without an application abstraction level "helper". this means that is not a replacement, is not the new complete system, but indeed it's amplifying the before tiny user funcions given from alsa (that is doing the hard job with the hardware). Another big step for the all open source community. ...and this means, again, you must specify the alsa use flag to compile it with that support.

emerge -pv pulseaudio
media-sound/pulseaudio-0.9.22-r2  USE="X alsa asyncns avahi bluetooth caps dbus glib ipv6 jack libsamplerate tcpd udev -doc -gnome -lirc (-oss) -realtime (-system-wide) -test" 0 kB