OpenSUSE Multimedia :: Keep Skype From Muting All Other Applications When Using Pulseaudio On 11.4
Mar 13, 2011
I recently upgraded to 11.4, but skype seems to mute all other application streams when a call is active. I can manually unmute them, but it is rather annoying especially when listening to music in the background using Amarok since everytime a new track starts it creates a new stream and is muted again.
I installed pavucontrol just to see if it had more options then kde's built in multimedia settings, but it doesn't (just has the cool how loud is the volume currently). I like the individual application (stream) volumes.
Just upgraded to Lucid (32bit), pulse generally seems to work ok: I get sound out, I can see various apps connecting via the Sound Preferences dialog (audacious, flash via alsa interface, etc.), and my mic seems to work fine too.
However, when starting skype (v2.1.0.81 which defaults to pulseaudio if it's running), it isn't able to output any sound and I never see a connection appear in Sound Preferences. Don't really want to force it to use Alsa or anything like that; I'd be fine with pulse if it would just work.
I've tried installing the .deb from the skype site as well as the official ubuntu package, with the same result. Any idea why pulse seems to be working, but skype can't seem to use it properly?
Like I said in the title skype takes more than 30% if the cpu usage with more than 25 % used by pulseaudio to be sure pulseaudio was the problem I tried
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.
After an hour of trying to configure my microphone to work with Skype under ALSA, I finally reached success! Below is crucial information to what I did, I am using the laptop's built-in microphone.
ALSAMixer Settings ALSAMixerImage Skype 2.1.0.81(Beta) Settings All my devices(microphone, speakers, ringing) and mainly my microphone are set to Default Device. I left the box labeled "Allow Skype to automatically adjust my mixer levels." unchecked
Computer HP Pavilion dv6000 series(specifically Pavilion 6833us Entertainment Notebook) openSUSE 11.3 64-Bit KDE 4.5 ALSA 1.0.23-2.12 Sound Card(Exactly in YAST): 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller Configured as sound card number 0 Driver snd-hda-intel
Useful Resources Skype for Linux Sound Setup Get your microphone working in Ubuntu 9.04 and skype (x64)
I've decided to get back into using Suse as my primary OS! I'm almost there, only a few minor issues to work out remain. One of these issues is with my audio drivers. My audio is working for the most part. I have sound coming from both my speakers and the front-audio jack. When I plug headphones into the front jack the audio is muted; however, unless I unmute the audio I won't get any sound from my headphone jack. The volume is shared. How can I give headphones a separate volume control? Or just completely mute my speakers when I have headphones plugged in. Using alsamixer, Headphones are disabled. Which seems odd. The output of alsa-info.sh can be found here.
I ve installed ubuntu 10.10 on hp g62 amd64, but on skype mic doesnt work. I ve tried playing with pulseaudio controller and everything is unmuted as well as in alsamixer. how can I solve it? i think there is some problem with alsa, because when i restart skype mic work by few minutes but after that not.
Background Info: Normally the microphone doesn't work with some applications such as Empathy or the new Google Talk plugin for Linux. The workaround I'm using (and I don't know why this works) is to unlock the left and right channels in Pavucontrol and set one channel to zero, and to boost volume I set the other to max.
Issue: The Google Talk plugin is resetting the channels to be locked together. This is pretty frustrating because now they have free calling and I have no cell reception in my dorm room.
When I installed my 64 bit system of Ubuntu 10.04 the sound worked very well and I were very happy. The problem started however when I installed Skype which uses pulseaudio. As soon as I start skype (or any other application that uses pulse, HoN for example) the applications sound output or input does not work at all. If I have pulseaudio started in some way, applications that I suppose do not use it like spotify or flash player stops to produce sounds. And when I type "pulseaudio" in the terminal it gives me this:
running 10.04.2, on a Lenovo G550, I am experiencing an intermittent problem, in that after every reboot, and some wake after suspend, the internal mic has muted. I have to open alsamixer to reset its level, and then it's fine till I reboot and sometimes it is fine after a suspend, but not always. How do I get alsamixer to "remember" the setting?
I just installed skype 2.1 beta 2 (the deb file) from the skype website, but the only option I see under Sound Devices -> Recording is "PulseAudio Server (local)" This doesn't work for me, as the skype test calls don't actually record anything I say. I use skype a lot and FINALLY got it working under karmic, but I needed to upgrade to lucid and now it's broken.
When I open Sound preferences and look at the Applications section, Skype shows up as recording when I run its test call... but no sound is recorded? How is it possible that my sound card picks up something recording but doesn't actually record it when I'm in skype?
I installed skype 2.1 beta and pulse audio. Just installed the packages and it worked. Surprisingly. Problem is that Skye now selects pulseaudio for microphone, out and ringer. No problem it actually set it up to my logitech headset which is by default almost right. It set it up to use my logitech microphone and headset speakers for talking, which is great. But I want to switch my ringer from headset speakers to main computer speakers. Anyone know where this can be done. Skype only lets me select pulseaudio (locla server) for all three. Yet somehow it knows to use my logitech headset for talking. But I want to direct my ringing of incoming calls to main speakers. pavucontrol does not let me do this. Anyone has an idea of how to do this? If there is a graphical application that can do this, please let me know.
Used ubuntu for years and loved it. recent bugs in flash and loggin out and others made me try debian for extra stability and security at the risc of loosing myself in the complexity of debian as it's no plug and play here. So far seems to be very similar in use to ubuntu, surprisingly. Running nvidia-xconfig seems to be the only difference. So far I have been able to figure things out to make it work, we will see how I do in the long run. Ubuntu was sure easy.
I am using 8.04, Pulseaudio, Microsoft Lifechat USB headset and Skype on a Compaq 210. Pulse works fine for everything else. One day, it just stopped working for no apparent reason (only on the Skype mic) so I uninstalled and went back to ALSA (for a few reasons) but couldn't get that working either so now back to square one. When I boot Skype, all goes well, can place a test call, no errors. But on playback of the message it's pure fuzz, basically white noise, no sign of my voice. I've twiddled with just about every volume control and toggle I can find and then some, but nothing. Another interesting thing; Pulse is now NOT working unless I input 'pulseaudio -D' in a terminal after boot. Then it seems to be okay, 'cept the mic.
Strange as the mic works perfectly and crystal clear in Sound Recorder. No probs. So:
1/ How do I replace the recorded white noise in a Skype test call with my own mellifluous tones and;
2/ Where do I put 'pulseaudio -D' (what file) so it will be read and turn pulse on at boot?
Using Skype 2.1.0.47 (I know there is a newer version, .87 I think, but that was even more problematic). Another strange thing; the newer version (.87?) worked flawlessly for months before the mic just one day died (ONLY in Skype). As explained on my last thread; wife's uni/entertainment machine and me being the house computer dude, one of the reasons we use Linux is so I am not fixing Windows problems constantly. I only go near this machine when something goes pear-shaped so that is rarely. My wife doesn't tweak with her computer AT ALL.
Sound issues on this machine have been pretty much constant and I am really sick of it. I have two desktops running ALSA and Skype flawlessly with any USB headset AND they can ring incoming calls through the external speakers and you can take the call through the headset, something that is seemingly impossible for some reason in Pulse. Despite its bells and whistles, this is a serious oversight by Pulse developers in my opinion. (Unless I'm missing something and I've have searched for hours trying to fix THAT little mystery).
I've been having this problem in multiple versions of ubuntu from 6.04 to 10.04(which i am currently using). I have a hp 500 laptop(quite old) and when i plug in the headphones it plays sound from both the headphones and the laptop speakers. This doesn't happen when i'm using windows xp. if there are any threads about this please direct me to them if not give me advice on what to do.
I would like to disable the headphone jack shutting off main speakers when I plug headphones in. I know this sounds odd. But when I use mixxx I would like to be able to use the line out for external amp hook up. The headphones for cueing. This worked after I installed mixxx but once I rebooted the computer it no longer worked.
I've got Karmic installed on a MacBook, and I'm trying to get Skype up and running. I've already patched the iSight firmware, so the the webcam itself works fine, but I have no microphone support. If I go to Sound Recorder, the microphone picks up my voice fine, but not Skype. In the Skype audio settings, all are set to Pulseaudio server (local), and that is the only selection available.
I have had problems with pulseaudio since F13 so the problem is not new just that I have been working since 12 AM till now 6:30 AM trying to fix it and I have failed the only thing left from what I see is a complete reinstall. When I start skype it works for 5 secs then the sound becomes corrupt and make a large crackling noise. I have reinstalled alsa and pulse atleast 10 times removed any trace of config files and still the same result. It first broke when I turned off tsched in hopes that my microphone will no longer broadcast a buzzing sound. This setting broke everything and even after I reverted it the symptoms remained the same. It's 3rd time I reinstall fedora because of pulseaudio. Until the problem can be fixed I have reverted back to ALSA.
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.
In the 11.4 product highlights it says: "...availability of PulseAudio in a Plasma Desktop session by default", but what does this mean to the average KDE user? The SUSE-Wiki has no entry for pulse nor pulseaudio.
While basic sound works fine out of the box for me, I am confused between Phonon, KMix and PulseAudio. Each does something else:KMix is now entirely useless, right? Phonon only allows me to select which sound device is used for which input. PulseAudio allows me to select indivdual volume per Application through pavucontrol, but it does not replace phonon nor Kmix There is no KDE Plasmoid/Systray thingy for configuring volume with PulseAudio? Is there no single application/plasmoid to handle all sound options in one go?
I think it is pretty bad that pavucontrol is not even installed for KDE-users by default, and it took me a while to figure it out. Or is there another application that a KDE-user should rather use by default?
I mean things work fine, such as using Phonon to automatically choose my Bluetooth headset for voice communication while music and games at the same time automatically use the speakers for output. Changing volume with pavucontrol works, but why do I need separate things for that?
This is not meant as a rant! I am just wondering whether the PulseAudio/KDE-Integration is just work-in-progress, or whether I am missing something important here entirely. After all, 11.4 and KDE 4.6 looks pretty polished to me overall, and so the audio situation sticks out as odd to me.
I tried Disabling PulseAudio via Yast (didnot remove the packages), and the channels came back in KMix, but then the native apps of KDE, if I can call them so, like Kaffeine started playing 5.1 movie tracks in stereo! In VLC at the same time I had to choose manually 5.1, but then stereo tracks didn't played. Enabled PulseAudio back. Selected Analog Surround 5.1 Output (Phonon->Speaker Setup), backend is GStreamer. Installed the VLC Pulse support package (vlc-aout-pulse). Selected Pulse as the Output Module in VLC. Now Kaffeine plays 5.1 and stereo tracks properly as well as VLC now Automatically switches to 5.1 playback if the track in movie is 5.1 and also plays stereo tracks properly. I guess with PulseAudio we will need all audio/video apps to have some kind of PulseAudio support (built-in/plug-in) or else we will face probs. Now I need them all channels (master, front, centre, rear and LFE). Especially I need LFE (bass) which is too high by default, and I run alsamixer to minimise LFE channel, but as soon as I play a movie or music it is back to 100% automatically.
When I first installed 11.4 I was unable to access the usb webcam mic on Skype. I use Tumbleweed and after a couple of KDE updates I was able to access the webcam mic in Skype. I did this by setting the webcam mic as the first device to use in either pavucontrol or systemsettings>multimedia>phonon>audio capture. There have been many KDE updates since then and now I am back to having no mic in Skype. I will set my webcam mic as described above but pavucontrol will no longer save my changes. It is permanently stuck using internal audio analog stereo as the first capture device. My webcam mic is listed but it is four down on the list and Skype will not access it.
Woke up this morning and updated my main myth machine, and now mythfrontend won't start. I get this message:
Code: 2009-05-12 07:57:50.003 Closing DB connection named 'DBManager0' 2009-05-12 07:57:50.006 Primary screen 0. 2009-05-12 07:57:50.008 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: ***.***.*.*** 2009-05-12 07:57:50.010 Using screen 0, 1680x1050 at 0,0 2009-05-12 07:57:50.069 AudioPulseUtil, Error: Failure to suspend: Invalid argument 2009-05-12 07:57:50.070 AudioPulseUtil, Error: Failure to suspend: Invalid argument 2009-05-12 07:57:50.070 ERROR: ***Pulse Audio is running!!!!*** 2009-05-12 07:57:50.070 ERROR: But MythTV was not able to suspend it. EXITING!
So, I googled about, and found this thread on a mythtv dev mailing list: No Start with Pulse Audio (Changeset 20310) | MythTV | Dev Apparently, the new mythtv .21-fixes is incorporating the .22 pulseaudio check. Myth checks for pulse and exits if it can't kill it. I had sound issues with 11.1 before, and tried to remove pulseaudio but created bigger headaches for myself by doing so. Interestingly, if you log into a mythtv session from the xdm, mythfrontend will run. So, pulse isn't loaded at the session level. But, I'd like some other workaround that allows me my normal desktop at the same time!!
About two weeks ago I enabled KDE factory repo to get the latest KDE 4.4. Everything was fine until a recent update, which caused sound working only in some applications. Sound now works when tried in System Settings and Yast->Sound, but it does not work in Firefox, VLC, Skype, and so on.
I have the restricted format software installed via one-click-install. I found that in 11.4 mplayer would fail to start playing a MP3 clip, but succeed on the second and subsequent tries, but only within a short time afterwards. A quick examination showed that this was because mplayer was firing off an instance of pulseaudio, which stayed around for a while, then exited. This was not acceptable for a clip played from a cron job so I found the way to bypass pulseaudio for mplayer was by putting this line in ~/.mplayer/config:
Code: ao=alsa Worked fine afterwards. I don't know if this affects the ability to output audio from other apps while the sound device is in use, but I don't have that situation, so this workaround suits me.
I am trying to stream my Desktop through VLC. Video isn' t a problem but audio is.The problem is with the upgrade from 11.3 to 11.4 I got pulseaudio again.I can't find a way to stream all local audio channels with VLC and pulseaudio.I tried "padsp vlc" and used oss:///dev/dsp which kinda works but the audio is very very low as in useless.I also tried setting up rtp/multicast pulseaudio but I couldn't get it working.
I have openSUSE 11.4 KDE 64-bit. Right now I have 20 identical pulseaudio applets that each looks like a circuit board or a PCI adapter on my computer's taskbar. I tried uninstalling then re-installing pulseaudio and the package that choose device (padev?) many times but this problem remains.
Due to the fact that with pulseaudio it is impossible to change the microphone/speaker/ring devices in skype, I had to remove pulseaudio.
After that I can choose a device in skype, but the mixer does not work anymore. There is a way to have a working mixer without pulseaudio package or a way to choose audio devices in skype with pulseaudio installed?!
Does anyone notice a degradation in sound quality with skype and pulseaudio? It seems that when I use pulseaudio there are bugs in the sound quality in skype. I also notice a lag when talking to someone with the VoIP feature.
I can be granted permission, and I'm in the proper groups, but pulseaudio tells me I can't get permission.. I wanted to see if anybody else had this problem / knew of a solution / isolate whether it is a pulseaudio, policykit, whatever problem, before I post a bug upstream.
In suse 11.2 when play a video file the media players eats up to 50% cpu and pulseaudio another 18-20% with compiz turn on, when i turn the compiz off media player goes down to 7-8 % and pulseaudio 1-2%. With audio files the picture is different - 2-3 % sometimes 7% pulseaudio and there is not matter if compiz is turned off or on.Is there some kind of configuration should be done ?
