[CS-FSLUG] Linux Audio: PulseAudio

[Jonathan E. Brickman]

OK, I just started learning some lessons on PulseAudio.  The biggest one 
is, I think I see why it is needed.  The list of Linux software sound 
systems is amazingly chaotic, but for the first time, I followed a 
simple recipe and saw things work: the Pulse team is the first one which 
seems to work hard to get everything working.

For one example, Adobe Flash audio.  For web multimedia, it is essential 
today.  I had five different distros do Flash audio for a while, and 
then stop.  I had two (and multiple versions of Ubuntu...) never work at 
all.  In every case, I studied what was in use, learned that it was 
trying to use things already present and running, followed instructions 
et cetera, and they never worked.

But Flash 10 supports Pulse.  Adobe folk must have been impressed.  Once 
I had Pulse working, it worked, and very stably, a big difference.  And 
there was a way before; I don't understand how it worked, but it did exist.

I also now think I know one very good reason why KDE 3 had to be thrown 
out:  it is very aRts-integrated for sound.  aRts is an audio system no 
longer in development: its leader declared 2-3 years ago that he no 
longer believes its fundamental design principles are good, and that it 
deserves to be abandoned, so he abandoned it.  There is a page on the 
aRts site with the text, it is an educational read.  I agree with him 
:-)  aRts used to do awful things for me every time I tried to depend on 
it.  Perhaps its most seriously troubling aspect, was that it ran nearer 
the KDE high-level, and far from kernel-level, which means audio/video 
sync was often bad, and the kernel could not babysit the audio hardware 
as it badly needs to do, resulting in all sorts of crashes and hangs. 

Perhaps we need to compare KDE 3 to Windows 95, and KDE 4.1 to XP.  
Things are not that simple, but the type of analogy remains.

Another example.  Audacity (a powerful yet newby-usable audio editor) is 
a hold-out project; reportedly development has slowed quite a lot 
lately.  But the Pulse people have something for such cases:  it will 
run, with a small change of launch icon, which simply turns Pulse off 
for the duration of the run.  I tried it; it is seamless. 

J.E.B.