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Removed verbiage and replaced with easier to read table
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PulseAudio is a sound server that is installed by default in most Debian 8 desktop environments. It's main purpose is to provide a high level interface for controlling how multiple "sources" (programs that want to play sounds) are connected to "sinks" (sound cards). | PulseAudio is a sound server that is installed by default in most Debian desktop environments. It's main purpose is to provide a high level interface for controlling how multiple "sources" (programs that want to play sounds) are connected to "sinks" (sound cards). |
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As Debian 8 (Jessie, in 2016), you rarely need to install pulseaudio by hand as it is a dependency of the most popular desktops (cinnamon, gnome, kde, mate automatically include pulseaudio; xfce and lxde do not). {{{ # apt-get install pulseaudio }}} Since at least squeeze, installing pulseaudio through apt in this way should result in a pulseaudio system that "just works". Pulseaudio becomes the default when the package is installed. Everything (including flash) will use it. This can be checked by with pavucontrol (in the pavucontrol package). If the sound is registering in the vu vumetre of that program, then it is being routed through the pulse system. |
As Debian 8 (Jessie, in 2016), you rarely need to install pulseaudio by hand as it is a dependency of the most popular desktops || '''Desktop Environment''' || '''Automatically includes pulseaudio?''' || || Cinnamon || Yes || || Gnome || Yes || || KDE || Yes || || LXDE || No || || Mate|| Yes || || XFCE || No || If you need to install it manually, `apt-get install pulseaudio` should "just work" in every release since Debian 6 (Squeeze). Pulseaudio becomes the default when the package is installed. Everything (including flash) will use it. This can be checked by with '''pavucontrol''' (in the pavucontrol package). If the sound is registering in the vu vumetre of that program, then it is being routed through the pulse system. |
Translation(s): English - Русский
Contents
- PulseAudio
- Installing PulseAudio
- Surround sound system
-
Solving Problems
- Restarting the Pulseaudio Daemon
- Missing playback devices or audio capture
- Disabling daemon autospawn
- Front Panel Jacks not working
- Stuttering and audio interruptions
- Interrupting play in Amarok when running Skype
- Excessive CPU usage and distortion
- Sound level is low or suddenly becomes too loud
- Various problems with Skype and Wine
- Advanced
PulseAudio
PulseAudio is a sound server that is installed by default in most Debian desktop environments. It's main purpose is to provide a high level interface for controlling how multiple "sources" (programs that want to play sounds) are connected to "sinks" (sound cards).
Installing PulseAudio
As Debian 8 (Jessie, in 2016), you rarely need to install pulseaudio by hand as it is a dependency of the most popular desktops
Desktop Environment
Automatically includes pulseaudio?
Cinnamon
Yes
Gnome
Yes
KDE
Yes
LXDE
No
Mate
Yes
XFCE
No
If you need to install it manually, apt-get install pulseaudio should "just work" in every release since Debian 6 (Squeeze). Pulseaudio becomes the default when the package is installed. Everything (including flash) will use it.
This can be checked by with pavucontrol (in the pavucontrol package). If the sound is registering in the vu vumetre of that program, then it is being routed through the pulse system.
Surround sound system
Many people have a multi-channel sound cards, but use the speakers for the two channels. PulseAudio has no default settings for surround sound support. To enable all channels, edit the file /etc/pulse/daemon.conf: uncomment default-sample-channels (ie remove the semicolon at the beginning of the line) and set it to 6 if you System 5.1 or 8, if your system is 7.1.
# Default default-sample-channels = 2 # To 5.1 default-sample-channels = 6 # To 7.1 default-sample-channels = 8
After making the changes, restart Pulseaudio.
Solving Problems
Restarting the Pulseaudio Daemon
To reread the config files ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf and /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, do this:
$ pulseaudio --kill $ pulseaudio --start
Missing playback devices or audio capture
If Pulseaudio does not correctly detect your input / output devices ("sources" and "sinks" in Pulseaudio parlance), you can try deleting the configuration files. This is probably unnecessary overkill, but might help some people.
$ pulseaudio --kill $ rm -r ~/.config/pulse /tmp/pulse-* $ pulseaudio --start
Disabling daemon autospawn
From version 6.0 of pulseaudio, the daemon autospawns each time its killed. In order to have the previous way of running the following is required to be changed :-
[$] cat /etc/pulse/client.conf | grep autospawn ; autospawn = yes
Copy the configuration files to ~/.config/pulse
[/etc/pulse] └─[$] sudo cp client.conf /home/shirish/.config/pulse/
Change the file permissions so you can edit the file :-
[~/.config/pulse] └─[$] sudo chmod 446 client.conf
Make the change using your favorite editor so that it says :-
[~/.config/pulse] └─[$] cat client.conf | grep autospawn autospawn = no
Make sure that the indentation in the file is at it is and carry on with above.
Front Panel Jacks not working
As of wheezy, for some reason, pulseaudio does not see the toggle feature of some cards (i.e. CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio]) exposed by ALSA and playing with the pulseaudio interface (pavucontrol) won't bring happiness. The trick, (for now?), is to bring up the alsamixer ( or alsamixergui) and the audio output can be switched from the read of the card to the front-panel as well as the mic input.
Stuttering and audio interruptions
If a low-power machine stutters (audio breaks up), you can try adding the following to /etc/pulse/daemon.conf:
high-priority = no nice-level = -1 realtime-scheduling = yes realtime-priority = 5 flat-volumes = no resample-method = speex-float-1 default-sample-rate = 48000
Interrupting play in Amarok when running Skype
Comment out or remove the line in the /etc/pulse/default.pa
load-module module-cork-music-on-phone
Excessive CPU usage and distortion
Add a line to /etc/pulse/default.pa
load-module module-udev-detect tsched = 0
Sound level is low or suddenly becomes too loud
Add a line to /etc/pulse/daemon.conf:
flat-volumes = no
Various problems with Skype and Wine
Add or uncomment the line in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
default-fragments = 25 default-fragment-size-msec = 25
Advanced
Dynamically enable/disable
As mentioned above, all sound will automatically be routed thorugh pulseaudio when the pulseaudio package is installed. These instructions describe how to disable it with the pulseaudio package still installed. Individual users can then reenable it themselves as needed.
The "just works" magic is achieved through configuration files placed in /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/. Without these files in place, the regular alsa defaults will be used. Therefore, to achieve the default alsa behavior with the pulseaudio package installed, divert these files
mkdir /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.pulse/ dpkg-divert --divert /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.pulse/pulse.conf --rename /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/pulse.conf dpkg-divert --divert /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.pulse/99-pulseaudio-default.conf.example --rename /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/99-pulseaudio-default.conf.example dpkg-divert --divert /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.pulse/50-pulseaudio.conf --rename /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pulseaudio.conf
Now if a user wishes to use pulseaudio, they can create an ~/.asoundrc file that looks something like
@hooks [ { func load files [ { @func concat strings [ { @func datadir } "/alsa.conf.pulse/" ] } ] errors false } ]
If a user wishes to switch between pulse and non-pulse on a quasi-regular basis, put the above into the ~/.asoundrc.pulse instead and symlink it to ~/.asoundrc when pulse is desired
ln -s ~/.asoundrc.pulse ~/.asoundrc
and remove it when not
rm ~/.asoundrc
be sure also when disabling pulse to kill the server so that other things can directly access the soundcard again
killall pulseaudio
Temporarily suspend and run an application without PulseAudio
You can use the pasuspender utility, if you only need to disable PulseAudio temporarily, to run an application and have it access your audio devices directly.
Run: pasuspender -- yourapplication [yourapplicationoptions]
- Configure your application to access your audio devices directly (e.g. select your soundcard ALSA address in an audio player)
While you run pasuspender, other applications won't be able to use PulseAudio. When you quit the application, the default behaviour of PulseAudio will be restored automatically.
See man pasuspender for more information.
Here are some features of PulseAudio
- High quality software mixing of multiple audio streams with support for more than one entrance (source) and exit (sink).
- Can be used to combine multiple sound cards into one (with frequency rate).
Large set of supported client libraries. Applications that use ESD, ALSA, oss, libao and GStreamer, are supported without the need for any changes. Modules for PulseAudio are available for xmms and mplayer.
- Low latency and accurately measured delay time for recording and playback. Ability to fully synchronize multiple playback streams.
- Network transparency: the application can play or record audio on a computer other than the one on which they run.
- Extensible architecture with modules for jackd, multicast-rtp, lirc and avahi, among others.
Install from source
Seems as though there ought to be some general instructions for building things from source in Debian, but I couldn't find them when editing this.
Download
from here:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Download/
Configure
???
Build
make
Install
Put it somewhere. Make some links so programs can find it.
- Reference:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/PerfectSetup/