Discussion on:

PulseAudio: An Achilles Heel that needs repair

Two people use the same software, one has problems while the other wondwers what the hell the first guy is Talking about. I don't record regularly, but when I do, I never had skipping or other problems with pulseaudio, or with audacity for that matter. This variety in experience happens all the time, but more often in free/open source software for some reason. It's really a shame.

This is the very phenomena where I say I live with Linux (Arch64) daily without much of a hitch and then a friend tries Ubuntu or some other distro, has major problem, and thinks I lied. Never do they realize that different distros have different behavior and quality. Finding the right distro, that works well with you and your equipment is not a simple task. Why Linux can't unify the quality of behavior across distros is beyond me, as they all have the same building blocks. It also has been my experience that the more the distro is noob friendly, the more it's problems get bizarre and unsolvable. Probably all that fooling around to make the system config itself without the user...

Still, Jack (can I call you Jack?), when you wrote "Installed three flavors of Linux (Ubuntu Studio, Linux Mint, Ubuntu 12.10)", did you realise you really installed three version of UBUNTU? Frankly, I feel sticking with the Ubuntu family and expecting different results is... unrealistic. The have the same core, why would they have been so different in behavior?

Three actual "other flavors" would involve Opensuse, Fedora, and maybe you could give Arch a try. I have Arch on a total of 4 systems, and I have nothing to complain about, not even pulseaudio. Oh, and under Arch, you could live without pulseaudio if you chose to... At least, drop the Ubuntu based stuff if you want to try other flavors of Linux.

If you're just recording audio, why not use a dedicated voice recorder? For $100 you can get superb audio quality (even better if you connect a good microphone), and a digital audio file that you can edit on your computer.

As per Arch Linux wiki, skipping and crackling is due to bad drivers in Alsa, not PulseAudio.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#Glitches.2C_skips_or_crackling

What is great about Linux
Get a live distro - test your hardware all works sound included.

Install the live distro
- system goes to sleep and wakes up - no sound -
- reboot system and it loads with low sound
-FN keys + sound display the correct stuff on screen but it does not work
-Some apps recognize your sound some dont.

The problems above are amongst others I had to deal with , I am an open source enthusiast, but installing in 20 mins and spending 20 hours fixing sound is too much

Perhaps a bit old school, (GNU/Linux user since '94) but must comment that I'm always a bit taken back when I read 'fix this now' articles in the Linux/FOSS space. Don't misunderstand, I agree that these types of articles should be expressed, especially by FOSS writers that have a platform to do so. Still, like when Eric Raymond vented/ranted about printing some years ago, there is no 'company' behind PulseAudio (it's organized under freedesktop.org), so to whom exactly are these complaints directed (rhetorical)? It's no accident that audio has languished as, surprise, like video (let's not get into NVidia/Intel/AMD, etc., right?), it is not trivial against so many platform and chipsets (no to mention all the usb and firewire sound interfaces (chipsets) out there). My feeling after many years and FOSS conferences is there is basically a very small ('small' being subjective, I'll agree) pool of individuals who are deep enough to code audio easily from hardware (kernel/alsa) all the way 'up' to the desktop, and my guess is they're likely gainfully employed in the non-FOSS world at some level and probably don't 'do' audio fulltime, imho.

At this stage, for mainstream Linux distros everything 'desktop audio' related sits on top of ALSA and I've had the best luck troubleshooting audio (assuming hardware is all OK) when I start with ALSA (kernel upwards, not sound server downwards). I do home audio recording and mixing (Ardour, etc.) so I tend to live in the 'Jack' world, but once I make sure ALSA is set up correctly with a proper .asoundrc and I'm certain the lower audio layer is stable and efficient, I then have no issues with Jack (sound server). I use and love Funtoo, and run i3 as my WM, so I do understand I'm not a typically Linux user. Still, from years past, most audio issues I've had I've resolved by getting the kernel and ALSA 'correct' first.

Jack, might be a good 'investigation' article/series to do some articles on 'Who Works on Linux Audio?' or some such. Not sure if Corbet over at LWN has ever done a series on it - a quick search did bring up some Audio articles, but not much focused on the 'who'. I think interviewing the folks who are down in the trenches fighting this audio stuff (like the folks over at ffado?) would be interesting and hearing their thoughts on current status, developments, directions and what needs to be done might get some more people involved. Just a thought.

I simply use Synaptic to rid my computers of pulseaudio and compiz-core. It always feels sooo good when I click that "Apply" button!

For my purposes Alsa and VLC cover the bases flawlessly. BTW, if you use Lubuntu, as I do, your computer is automatically in a "Pulse-Free-Zone."

Did you go back to the system which worked for you?

Just try using Brasero. I haven't had it write a good disc for me in years, over different distributions and a few different computers. And I am not the only one who has had this problem, either. I can't even use it to write a Live DVD to disc, to use it.

But pulseaudio bothered me. I have Alsamixer installed on Xubuntu, works fine for me.
Deal-breaker was, several releases ago someone decided (yes this is petty) to remove the sensible volume icon on the taskbar with some ridiculous thing, and I wanted the old-style one back, and had to jump through hoops to even find out how!
Turns out the traditional one was very hard to get when the new indicator applet was released, big mistake. All fixed now though.
As to sound card problems, I don't worry much, I don't have a mic and rarely turn my speakers on, unless I go to you-tube (rarely.)

I've never had the patience to get it working.

Jack,

I have been using linux for semi pro recording for about a decade and do not get skipping problems.. here is some advice;

1. Get rid of Pulse Audio, it's rubbish ... for general use ALSA with all the plugins installed is fine. It doesn't need an abstraction layer, for general purpose providing the dmix plugin is installed.
2. For recording use jackd (qjackctl is a decent app to control it) - spend an hour learning it and you can get your system tight - if your audio chipset on motherboard is rubbish (as they usually are for recording purposes) you can loosen the latency and reduce audio skips. Although I disagree with a previous posters comments, most IntelHD audio compliant devices run rock solidly these days....
3. Invest in a half decent USB microphone if you haven't already - standards compliant USB audio devices work very well with ALSA..

I've played with using pulse audio on my mythtv boxes (recycled hardware) and laptop even in recent times, it just doesn't work right. I always go back to vanilla ALSA.. I even keep a spare Behringer UCA 202 in case I have issues with the audio on the mythtv boxes...

Also you may try av linux .

And just for the sake of completeness please give your hw details and specify if you used a 32 or 64 bit kernel. Guys from ubuntu are friendly and shall be more than interested in solving the problem if they have all details .

I've had a lot of trouble with pulseAudio too.
I went through a lot of try and error until I found out that it's possible to make a dump of the part of the puls audio register (i believe it's called different) and post it on their forum. (I don't know the technical details anymore, but it can be googled). But it seems to have worked , because with the next release of, in this case Linux Mint, it was solved.

I have encountered nothing but problems video and audio with Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04. None of the plugins seem to fix the problems and Chromium doesn't help. I've JAVA comments and different plugins but nothing is working. I have the same type of problems with NETFLIX even using the modified Ehoover version of Firefox.

As another commenter stated, always use Jack/ALSA for pro-recording. Never rely on PulseAudio(PA) as the solution alone. If it works fine, else turn it off first, then record. Those of us using Linux to record/playback full duplex know you should always go to Jack first.

I have had problems with PA on one distro, and then no problems on another. In each case you must always go to Jack anyway for professional use. And that won't necessarily require you to change distros, kernels, etc.

Hi,

I've no idea how they've coded it, but it sounds like a time stamp counter issue to me. I read an article recently about how this once reliable tool tool making applications perform smoothly has become far less so with current multi-core desktop CPUs particularly those that change their clock speed all the time.

If you are recording for professional reasons, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned some high end sound card being used. Yes there is decent built in sound in mother boards today but I still find a big improvement in background hiss and interference with even mid-range PCI or PCIe expansion cards.

I seem to remember seeing a comment, by someone who was working on pulse, that it was not designed to be used for any form of 'serious' recordings - a few years ago, admittedly.

On Fedora, using the Planet Karma (CCRMA) 'extras', jackd will stop pulse when it starts and start it again when it stops - this works well for me.

Audacity is easier to use than Ardour but it doesn't integrate well with Jackd

I'm not an *buntu fan personablly.

But those other sound systems all had their teething issues.
I think last time I looked at Ubuntu, pulse was running on top of ALSA.
I've also heard of issues with onboard sound & onboard with additional sound cards causing issues and recommendations of disabling the onboard if you were going to mainly use the card.
I think for now you have to play around, try pulse for both frontend/daemon, pulse+ALSA and ALSA only till they get around to fixing the the some of the issues people are having.