Debian Multimedia :: My Sound - ALSA Or Pulseaudio?
Jun 18, 2010
I am using a couple of Debian Distro (Sid and Lenny) add some Ubuntu into the mix. I made the switch because I was amazed and satisfied with Debian --> once installed, everything works. For me that's okay for o so many years now. I don't question a lot because it just works and I do my job on it satisfactorily. Namely programming the LAMP style programming. Lately I have been using Debian to communicate over the internet -- using Skype and Pidgin and other such things, not to mention listening to music, watching movies, just using the default applications when I originally install Debian.
Along the way, I need to configure something -- that is desktop related -- like the screen resolution of a new LCD monitor replacing the old one and such. Now about my sound -- I'm not touching it because it is working. But that is not the case always. Now I have a constant error -- it is irritating. Rhythmbox don't make a sound always when I have open a web browser (iceweasel, chrome, epiphany) and a site with multimedia object on it -- like a video or something. So how do I correct this? How do I know, too what I am using -- ALSA or Pulseaudio?
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Apr 29, 2011
I have recently acquired a Lenovo Q150 machine and attempting to use it as a HTPC. I've been reading that with this platform a newer kernel is required to make wireless, sound and a few other tweaks work correctly--so I bumped up to testing repositories to upgrade to the 2.6.38 kernel.[URL]...
The audio on this device has been more than a pain. I'm currently using XBMC to play media on this device and after setting the outputs to custom: plughw:1,9 sound is played correctly. I found this out by using alsamixer, selecting the sound card with the F6 key (Nvidia 1) unmutting all outputs, quiting, and running speaker-test -D plughw:1,X where X is the sub-device from the output of aplay -l until sound could be heard from the receiver.
Now my problem is that applications like mplayer, and iceweasel won't output any sound. I'd prefer not to use the optical out on the device and would like to send sound over HDMI. Has anyone had any luck getting it to work as it should?
I've also installed pulseaudio, not too sure if this is really needed. I've also used module assistant before upgrading to compile alsa from source, it worked but i just decided to upgrade the kernel instead of dealing with m-a every time an update comes through. Linux floppy 2.6.38-2-amd64 #1 SMP Thu Apr 7 04:28:07 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux
apt-cache policy alsa-base
alsa-base:
Installed: 1.0.23+dfsg-2
Candidate: 1.0.23+dfsg-3
[Code]...
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Nov 13, 2015
I'm having a problem all the sudden with amixer. set Master 5% used to control the pulse audio master volume. Suddenly, it will only raise and lower the headphone volume. Pulseaudio works, but I no longer have a master volume at all.
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Aug 2, 2011
I just got the upgrade for the Linux Kernel version 2.6.40-4 on my Fedora 15 x86-64 box today, and the installation completed with no problems. However when I rebooted after doing the upgrade, I noticed that I had no sound. I use an ATI Radeon HD 4350 video card, and the opensource ATI driver, and use the HDMI audio from it for sound, since my monitor has a sound output jack on it. I've booted into the previous kernel (2.6.38.8-35), and sound works fine. I've tried with the new kernel in both KDE (my default desktop environment) and XFCE to get sound, and it does not work in either one. I've tried installing the VLC Phonon Backend instead of the GStreamer Backend, reinstalling Pulseaudio, reinstalling Alsa, modprobing the necessary modules needed for the card, checking all configurations with the available Pulseaudio tools (paprefs, pavumeter, pavucontrol), checked the volumes using alsamixer, and reinstalling the ALSA Pulseaudio plugin. After trying all of these, I can still get no sound out of any application, and I also noticed that Flash video plays at 2-3 times it's normal speed after the upgrade. Again, these problems do not occur on my previous kernel. Did I maybe overlook something, or can anyone else think of something I could try?
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May 8, 2011
Regarding ALSA and PulseAudio - Explanation on how these two interact. After installing Debian I realised that my sound control (Volume Control: HDA Intel ALSA mixer) was different from what I had with Ubuntu where it would display a window called "Sound properties" in which allowed me to control the sound of each program running - I believe this is the PulseAudio aspect. (If I'm wrong at this point please correct me)
Now I have managed to get PulseAudio setup correctly for me (not as easily as Ubuntu but I moved to Debian to learn, not be spoon fed), however the way in which I did it may of been wrong - pretty much just went to synaptic and installed everything with PulseAudio in its name
Currently the sound icon in my top Gnome panel (within the notification area applet) has the ALSA mixer, sometimes when I log on it has the PulseAudio one (Sound preferences window), I don't really mind which one is loaded thanks to the PulseAudio Volume Control program (under Sound & Video). Is there a way though to stick with just one?
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May 22, 2011
I've had nothing but trouble with Pulseaudio in Fedora 14. I had managed to get rid of it in Fedora 10 with the command: su -c "yum remove alsa-plugins-pulseaudio pulseaudio" I just don't want to have to deal with Pulseaudio anymore. It does not like my sound card and gets in the way. Is there a Linux distribution that does not use Pulseaudio ?
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Dec 17, 2010
In the process of trying to get the softmodem working, I finally attached speakers to this laptop and tried to play some sounds. Nothing but silence. Both the KDE system sounds and a stand-alone player (noatun) produce nothing. No error messages that I can find, either. (That might explain why the softmodem is dead, too...) I've run alsaconf several times, and even uninstalled and reinstalled ALSA. It thinks it is working, but is not. What sorts of things do I need to check to find where it isn't working?
Info: The motherboard is a FIC 3500W with the VIA P4M800 integrated chipset. This includes the VIA 8237 sound system, which is what ALSA detects and tries to use. The machine also has a Realtek ALC655 but I don't see any drivers for that in the lsmod output, so this is a possible source of the trouble.
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May 29, 2011
I decided to break free from the horrible life of a windows vista user. I like my new debian (Wheezy) installation and everything worked fine so far. Now I stumbled upon a huge problem. When I want startup and login into my gnome installation the first application I open gets to play sound and others after that just don't work. I looked endlessly on google but in my understanding the problem is within the ALSA driver.
Some specs :
OS version : Debian 7 (Wheezy)
Laptop brand : Packerd Bell Easynote LJ-65
Kernel installed : 2.6.38-2-686 (Standard one in wheezy)
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Feb 26, 2010
i am having a problem with skype that i wasn't having before, and afaik skype hasn't been upgraded recently, so something else presumably has changed.
because of driver issues i have to use an external usb audio interface to do voip. this interface is not connected to the pulseaudio server. i am able to connect it to jackd and it works fine for both audio in and out. however it no longer shows up in the list of sound devices available to skype. this used not to be the case. i have tried stopping and restarting skype, as well as unplugging and reattaching the interface. the interface does not show up in pulseaudio manager in the lists of devices.
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Nov 7, 2010
i am using ubuntu 10.04 lts "lucid lynx", and has been encountering problems with audio recently.
i found out for some reason that my system fails to produce sound through pulseaudio, especially when an application is using it (e.g audacious).
the details of the problem:
1. i am using the pulseaudio equalizer from the repository, and i set a program (e.g. audacious) to use pulseaudio so that i can activate the equalizer.
2. while playing, all of my other applications lose the ability to produce any sound, and changing back to alsa during playback (which is using pulseaudio) in audacious indicates that the device is busy. examples include the loss of sound while playing a video from videos.
rough breakdown of what i want to (be able to) do: have sound for all applications using it, for example being able to play a video in videos from my browser and play music in audacious simultaneously.
is there a workaround for this? i'd like to think that there is, but so far my search returned nil.
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Sep 15, 2010
I'm under Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron using pulseaudio. I've got 2 soundcards : one internal AC97 7.1 without midi (card 0 in ALSA) and a PCI C-MEDIA 2.1 with OPL3 midi (card 3 in ALSA) I have sound in most ALSA or OSS applications with full 7.1 + 2.1 duplex. I have MIDI playback in any ALSA MIDI players (client 29:0 in ALSA).
I'm trying to run Final Doom for W95 on WINE with OSS driver. I have sound effects but no MIDI music. I tryed with padsp and aoss wrappers. I know I can use ALSA driver in wine or timidity, but I would rather use padsp + hardware MIDI if possible. How do I configure ALSA OSS emulation for MIDI playback and check that it's working ? I tryed playmidi but whatever I told it, it couldn't find any midi device.
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Jul 10, 2010
It was recommended to me that I remove pulseaudio and re-install alsa. All the howtos on reinstalling alsa had instructions for re-installing alsa from the source. Is it possible to re-install alsa from the repos? If so what are the necessary packages that I need to install, for a complete re-install of alsa?
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Dec 15, 2010
I spent a few days trying to make audio work on my TV connected via HDMI to a PC. The speaker test used by the sound preferences was dead, as was MPlayer. I managed to find a solution for MPlayer, giving the option "-ao alsa:device=hdmi", as specified in this article:So, basically ALSA can see all my devices. This is the output of aplay -l:Quote:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC1200 Analog [ALC1200 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
[code]...
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Sep 22, 2010
I've recently switched to Debian Squeeze x64 from Kubuntu 10.04 x64. Overall, I like Debian.
I have one small problem: I play Runescape occasionally, which requires Java. On Kubuntu, I'd use Sun Java, however on Debian it just crashes.
So, I decided to use OpenJDK. Now OpenJDK works fine... But I can't get it to work with ALSA audio output. I installed PulseAudio, and that took care of -that- problem.
Now, currently I have both ALSA and PulseAudio installed. For playback, it works great. PulseAudio is a bit laggy, which isn't too noticeable in Runescape, and for things like media, it seems to work OK. For TF2, which I play through Wine however... No. So, I set that to ALSA, and -that- worked right.
Now comes my main problem: I can't get mic input. I'm trying to use Teamspeak 3(proprietary), and while audio output works, I can't get any input.
TS3 lets me use ALSA or Pulse(along with a couple more), but:
1. Selecting PulseAudio lets me select "SB Audigy Analog Mono", the same thing but a "monitor", and "Default Input Device". None of those work, I get "Error: could not open the selected capture device". On top of that, in the PulseAudio control panel, I get zero level on the monitor, making me think its not setup correctly.
2. Selecting ALSA gives me a whole list of options... But they appear to be audio -outputs-, not capture devices. Also, I get the same error as above.
When running "arecord -l", I get:
Of these, I believe the first one was what worked on Kubuntu. Now, of note is that I'm using my "Line in 2" port for capture; On my previous installations I'd simply set its volume with alsamixer and be done with it.
That all being said, I need a solution to one of these three problems:
1. How can I get OpenJDK to work with ALSA, and thereby remove PulseAudio; get everything standardized with ALSA like I had on Kubuntu, OR
2. How can I remove PulseAudio lag, and get the mic working with that, remove ALSA and get everything standardized with PulseAudio, OR
3. How can I simply make my mic work with the current setup?
Any of those will do. I just need to get my mic working.
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Jan 8, 2010
At one point, I thought I needed pulseaudio for sound, so I messed around with installing it, even though at the time I had ALSA installed. (suffice to say, I know very little about linux sound). Pulseaudio never did work, I removed it with aptitude. But now ALSA seems to reach to pulseaudio for some reason.
Code:
More confusing is that there are no "alsa" looking processes in ps -A. But apparently, the basics are there
Code:
There's only one thing in init.d that seems relevent to alsa:
Code:
But doing this does not help anything. Does anyone know what to do from here?
And because I'm curious, how come I get sound from Flash Player and Audacity with no problem?
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Nov 6, 2010
I have installed xubuntu version 10. My sound card is a Yamaha dS-1S, and seems to be properly configured. Alsa mixer doesn't indicates any error. However, I can't manage to get any sound. I have checked that jacks are correctly plugged.
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Mar 15, 2010
I'm running Kubuntu 9.10 X64, and am using ALSA for my sound. I have no trouble with sound: VLC, Adobe's Flash plugin, Java, etc. all work properly. When I run the Gnash standalone player, sound does not work at all.
When I run Gnash in a terminal, I get this:
Quote:
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Apr 25, 2010
I cannot get sound to work with my new installed Opensuse 11.2. If I check yast (sound card configuration), I can play a nice testsound. However, Kde (I am using kde 4.4.2) does not issue any sound at all.
[Code].....
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Jun 7, 2011
I seem to be having a problem with my sound. Every time I start my computer, I hear the sound played at the login screen and the sound played when I login. Right then, every time, the sound cracks up and stops before it finishes. Running "ubuntu-bug audio" shows that ALSA works fine but pulseaudio does not. For reference, "pacmd list" says that there are 0 sinks, 0 sources and 0 caches.
Edit: Solved by a really stupid mistake: loose 3.5mm audio cable. Don't do that. your sound and you're on a desktop computer, go, right now, and check to make sure that you haven't made the same mistake as me.
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May 28, 2010
I hear no sound with pulseaudio, but I hear the "ready for login" sound after the x server starts. OS: Ubuntu x86 10.04
[Code]....
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Mar 13, 2010
I installed "Theocracy" on my 9.10 Karmic system. The installer asks for a sound device, dev/dsp is the default and I didn't change it. When I now try to start the game, I get the following error:
Unable to open sound device: Device or resource busy
Aborted
Execution of /usr/games/theocracy_base/theocracy.real failed!
What is the sound device when using PulseAudio on Karmic?
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Dec 25, 2010
Yesterday I decided to remove pulse (mainly because Skype was unable to work with it) but suddenly the sound icon is gone. After some searching on the net I understood that it was part of pulseaudio, but now I feel a bit lost. Alsa works like a charm instead, but since I also want to use ubuntu to record sound I'm not sure if it will work, and also I have a sound source for my HDMI interface and don't know how switch if I want to.
Machine: laptop HP dv6 pavilion 3070eh
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Aug 14, 2011
Just like the title says, when I use mpd with pulseaudio, I get no sound but clients appear to be playing (ncmpcpp and gmpc). Other players such as vlc or mplayer work just fine. If I go under the mixer, I get "no application is currently playing or recording audio" under the "Applications" tab when playing through mpd. In contrast, when I'm using mplayer or vlc, both show up in that tab. It behaves as though pulse is simply not configured to work with mpd.Here is my config (edited out any commented line for brevity):
Code:
$ cat /etc/mpd.conf | sed '/#/d'
music_directory"/media/data/DM/Genre"
playlist_directory"/var/lib/mpd/playlists"
db_file"/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
[code]....
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Apr 4, 2010
I took out some USB speakers that had been working for many months because I needed them on another PC. I plugged the audio out (lime colored female connector on back of Ubuntu PC) into my stereo receiver's VCR audio in (Red and white jacks), no sound. Yes, the cable is fine (same cable I took off the other PC which was working fine), and the receiver is set to VCR. I recall having to go through some hoops to get the USB speakers working way back when. The Pulseaudio volume control shows left and right pulsating bars when I have on Pandora, but sound is obviously not being sent to the right output. I also tried the optical audio out on the PC into the receiver's DSB optical in but again no sound.
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Apr 8, 2011
I tried to change to 5.1 from stereo and lost sound entirely. To get sound back I had to uninstall pulseaudio, but that gives me sound only on my right front speaker and sub.Whenever I install pulseaudio again I lose sound all over again.
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Dec 2, 2009
1. I run Suse 11.2 with two sound cards , one HDA comes with motherboard and second is USB, which I use for skype and talking. In YAST everything is fine the motherboard card is marked as prime card and the usb card is marked as second. But often when I log in alsa decides that second card is main and I have to pull out the USB card, run command "rcalsasound restart" and put the USB back afterward. It is a way that to be fixed in the way that alsa remember my choices forever. 2. The other problem is that from time to time the sound suddenly dies and I have to bring it up with rcalsasound restart again.
But I have to admit that their significant improvement with managing sound with PulseAudio.
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Mar 17, 2011
I've got sound - I hear all the system sounds, I can play sound files, CDs, etc. But I have not been able to record and play back anything with success.
Originally, when I would record (either with arecord or with audacity) I would get extremely low quality sound, with lots of noise and crackling, and my recorded voice was barely audible (even with volume turned up to max). I played with alsamixer for hours without being able to improve matters.
Things are worse now. I tried installing alsa-firmware, as indicated at SDB:Audio troubleshooting - openSUSE. I also tried updating alsa following instructions given at SDB:Alsa-update - openSUSE. I'm not sure which of these changes did it, but the result is that I can no longer record ANYTHING at all. I get absolutely nothing, not even the low quality noise and crackling I was getting before. It's as if there is no audio input at all.
Uninstalling alsa-firmware and reverting back to the older alsa version (1.0.20) didn't change a thing.
I'm running openSUSE 11.2, kernel 2.6.31.14-0.6-desktop, alsa 1.0.20. My sound card is a Creative X-Fi (by the way, yast cannot detect my card, another problem I have never solved).
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Aug 24, 2010
I have Ubuntu Lucid. If i dont' mistake, it should be possible to hear several applications playing sound simultaneously, with ALSA. But if 1 app is already playing, then starting a second one give always "device is busy".
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Oct 1, 2010
I recently converted an amd 64 bit WINdows machine to Lucid 64 bit. Everything has gone well. I had numerous issues with Pulseaudio that I removed it. Sound with Alsa has been great, including system theme sounds. I can record via a mike as well. What I cannot do is to capture sounds coming through the sound card. When I record I am getting empty files. The mixer indicates that there are two capture devices. Here is some data on my audio card.
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC888 Analog
[ALC888 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC888 Digital
[ALC888 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI
HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
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Nov 5, 2010
I was having a problem with ALSA, installed OSS, but now nothing works. I want to remove OSS, and reinstall ALSA. I am thinking about reinstalling, but I have all my stuff on here, so don't really want to.
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