Install and configure pulseaudio?

[vayu]

Can someone direct me how to to install and configure pulseaudio?

For years I had felt that pulseaudio was horrible and always uninstalled it whenever it came preconfigured.  It consistently gave me problems.  However, at one point it became great.  I had no issues running any software and it was so flexible, I could redirect the sound to any device and play different applications at different volumes all using easy to use system tray applications. I could switch from headphones to speakers to headset, from headset mic to other mics for different applications all in just a few clicks. I am missing it.  Given all the problems I've had in the past, I'm afraid of installing it myself.  Are there any siduction users that know it pretty well and can help me set it up?

[dibl]

I'm a pulseaudio user -- as you may know, others on the siduction dev team are not PA fans.  It is not a complicated package nor difficult to set up.  Here are two useful threads for you to review:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Desktops/KDE/

http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=3425


Also, if you are a wine user, you need to check around about configuring wine's audio if you are a PA user -- I don't know about that.

So, with your root terminal

Code Select Expand

apt-get update && apt-get install pulseaudio pavucontrol


Assuming you are running a KDE desktop, Alt-F2 "pavucontrol" brings up the control panel.  On the "configuration" tab, set something sensible for your system.  I use a webcam for a mic, and my built-in HDA Intel chip to run the speakers, and I turn off the built-in GF100 HDA digital channel.  So the GF100 device is "Off", the Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX is set to "Analog Mono Input", and the Built-In Audio is set to "Analog Stereo Output".  Then you go to the "Input Devices" tab and  click the "set as fallback" button to tell it to always use whatever your mic device is, and you go to the "Output Devices" tab and click the "set as fallback" button to tell it to always use your speakers or headphone or whatever, and make sure the mute button is not "on" for any device that you want to use.

Check your KDE system-settings > multimedia > music, and make sure you can test the top-most device on the list and get audio.  If not, test any other devices that are not grayed out, and move the working device to the top of the list.  I'm using the gstreamer backend -- you can play with a vlc backend if you wish.

That's really all there is to it.

ALSA, the alsamixer, and the alsamixergui will all still work correctly, or they should.  No need to remove anything.  Make sure your ALSA mixer settings are not in conflict with what you set in pavucontrol for your input and output devices.

BTW pulseaudio also works fine on my LXDE netbook, although that Toshiba hardware has a minor issue about unmuting itself, unrelated to PA or ALSA.

[hefee]

Zu PA und wine kann ich nur sagen: es lööpt. Jedoch braucht es libasound2-plugins:i386, falls ein 64bit system verwendet wird.


EN (dibl):  "RE: PA and wine -- I can only say it works.  For 64-bit, you'll need to install the libasound2-plugins:i386 package."

[vayu]

Thanks, I installed it and it just worked.  I can now easily switch between my speakers and my wireless headset and even do so for different applications.  There's a plasmoid named Veromix that makes using pulseaudio both simple and flexible. The same functions can also be performed with the pulseaudio volume control application.

Pretty much what I did is:
apt-get install pulseaudio paman pavucontrol pavumeter paprefs

Then I went to add widgets on my KDE panel and downloaded Veromix.

At first it didn't seem to work, then I played several sound applications (VLC, Audacious and flashplayer), and I connected my speakers and wireless headset. I had to go into both Audacious and VLC and set the audio output to pulseaudio. Then I used Veromix to play and switch the different applications between the speakers and headset.

[ralul]

@vayu, Most users who have problems with pulseaudio did have with alsa as well:
They edited audio related configs until totally rotten bad circuits etc... This is a case when the absolute beginner, who did nothing but pure install is in advantage