Ubuntu
pulseaudio package

  1. Bug #198453
  2. Comment #31

Comment 31 for bug 198453

Revision history for this message
Roberto Cássio Jr. (rcsdnj) wrote : Re: PulseAudio prevents programs relying on ALSA to work correctly

I believe that applications should be fixed, as Josh pointed, considering that the goal is to have PulseAudio really as the "standard" way to go. If PulseAudio is being consolidated, soon or later, they'll have to be changed. So those fixes would be for accomplishing the goal, and not because "the programs are broken".

But I also believe that ALSA emulation should be provided as default and work flawlessly for this transition, since not all packages will suddenly support PulseAudio. This doesn't seem to be the reality in the moment, though. libasound2-plugins is not installed as default on Hardy (and there's not even an working package for 32 bits apps in x86_64 - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-plugins/+bug/182731 ).

I've read that, in some cases, like wine, the ALSA implementation was making wrong assumptions about the hardware - which prevented working correctly using PulseAudio's alsa emulation. In this case, PulseAudio's team position seems to make sense for me - why would they emulate a behavior to support bad written code, making assumptions that wouldn't work even on some instances of "real" hardware? I don't know if it's Skype case, but if it is, then it should be fixed by them - just the same way as they should fix if some people were having problems because their soundcard doesn't have an "A" or "B" non-standard feature (like a mixer channel). Wine team already said they're taking care of this ( http://www.winehq.org/?issue=344#Wine%20/%20Pulseaudio%20issues )

And while they don't fix, the "real" soundcard is accessible to the ALSA relying applications when no program is using the PulseAudio's stream (at least in my computer). The problem is that some programs (like flashplugin-nonfree, on Firefox, and other one which I don't remember the name) likes to "hold for them" the audio stream, and, when this happens, there's no sound avaliable for the non-PulseAudio applications.

So, the important question to the bug: isn't there a "selfish audio application" making this problem happen in your machines? On my machine, Skype and Wine works fine - but only when there's not another program playing through PulseAudio.