How is Sound in Karmic?

[MetalHellsAngel]

I know when I installed jaunty I had some issues and had to install pulseaudio, but I was wondering if anything has changed in the sound department between jaunty & Karmic?


Thanks,
Angel

[buzzmandt]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

I'm using pulseaudio but it's been working wonderfully for me. NO sound issues at all for me with pa.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

Yeah, there are "issues" here, too.
Everyone's system seems to be behaving a little different. In my case, I would say that pulseaudio behaves a little better, though it can be troublesome to set up. The core difficulty is that different applications show up as different "streams", each of which needs its own volume set. So that means, when you have an application (like firefox, and flash in firefox, which oulseaudio treats as a different stream) that doesn't play, you will need to open padevchooser, open its "volume control" item, look at the Output Devices tab and see what "device" is playing sound, then open the "playback" tab and make sure the application has its volume turned up AND is sending its output to the right "output Device". Sounds like a real mess, but once you get it working, it seems fairly stable.
Direct access to alsa drivers doesn't work on my system at this point. In SystemSettings > Multimedia, testing the soundcard (through alsa and OSS) now fails, while the pulseaudio items work. That could be a problem down the line, as I have several radio-related applications that rely on OSS, and may not work (haven't tested yet).
Firefox 64-bit from the repositories won't procduce any sound (though flash embedded in it does), the firefox 32-bit from the firefox website works fine.
Audio on wine seems to be working, though why I don't know, since the wine people have dedicated themselves to refusing to use pulseaudio.
Most sound applications (alsaplayer, audacious2, etc) work, and show up as "alsa wrappers" in pulseaudio.
So the main problem with pulseaudio is configuration, and there does not appear to be any clear documentation on how to go about it, in sufficient detail to get it working without experimenting.

dibl has some interesting observations, too:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106733.0

Just for the record, I think the idea behind pulseaudio -- treating sound in a client-server model as opposed to a driver-hardware model, is a good one. Just tricky to get working.

[buzzmandt]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

after reading dr post, i did remember i had to set vlc to use pulseaudio. before doing so the sound in vlc would skip. now it's fine.

[MetalHellsAngel]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

This is what I figured, that the same issues would probably still exist. definitely not "out of the box" for a noobie. I really would love to see sound improve in Kubuntu, it's such a wonderful OS and to date since my jaunty install(about 2 months(new system)) the only problems I've had are sound problems, everything else works great.

[Rog131]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

This is hardware/driver depending issue (i think).

At here:

(lshw)
description: Multimedia audio controller
product: nForce Audio Processing Unit / nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP)
vendor: nVidia Corporation


(KInfoCenter: sound)
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.18rc3 emulation code) (Jaunty)
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.20 emulation code) (Karmic)

Mixer: Realtek ALC650F


System settings > Multimedia
Output Device Preference for the Audio Output: nVidia nForce2 with ALC650F
Backend: Xine

Setting are out of the box.

Here, i have not need to use Pulseaudio/GStreamer to get good audio.

[dibl]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

My audio is an integrated Intel HDA system (STAC 92xx chip). It actually works just fine, but at every boot I get an error message from Phonon informing me that Pulseaudio doesn't work, and it is reverting to the Analog device. Amusingly, it puts up that error while the greeting tune is playing perfectly. As far as I can tell, Pulseaudio does work just fine, as does the analog device. I think there's some bug in Phonon. FYI, this is not new -- the behavior in 9.10 is the same as it was in 9.04 -- I think it started with KDE 4.1 and has continued since then. All forms of audio, including flash in Firefox, work just fine on my hardware.

[Guest]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

well I wonder that pulseaudio is installed defaultly in kubuntu 9.10 or we have to install it after install

[Rog131]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

Earlier > Topic: Why do we have PulseAudio? (Jaunty)


The Pulseaudio seems to be part of the Alternate CD > kubuntu-9.10-beta-alternate-i386.list:

...
/pool/main/p/pulseaudio/libpulse-browse0_0.9.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
/pool/main/p/pulseaudio/libpulse0_0.9.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
/pool/main/p/pulseaudio/pulseaudio-esound-compat_0.9.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
/pool/main/p/pulseaudio/pulseaudio-module-udev_0.9.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
/pool/main/p/pulseaudio/pulseaudio-module-x11_0.9.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
/pool/main/p/pulseaudio/pulseaudio-utils_0.9.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
/pool/main/p/pulseaudio/pulseaudio_0.9.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
...

But i can't say if it is installed as default. I don't have it.

[Guest]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

.I m installing kubuntu 9.10 beta1 now on virtualbox, and I ll reply soon about pulseaudio integration

Installed and pulseaudio doesnt come as defaulty installed on kubuntu 9.10 beta

Well I installed pulseaudio manually after the installation and it works perfectly. I fixed pulseaudio as 1st prior in sound setting for all and it doesnt require gstreamer phonon backend. I hope it ll work in my main system perfectly too when it reaches final release (btw in 9.04 I could not use pulseaudio)

Tested skype beta2.1 calling, amarok, kaffein and smplayer.

[GreyGeek]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

This laptop has an HDA Intel (ALC262 Analog) sound system.

In Karmic the "Sound and Video Configuration" shows, in order:
HDA Intel (ALC262 Analog)
HDA Intel, INTEL HDMI (HDMI Audio Output),
HDA Intel (INTEL HDMI)
PulseAudio.

On this Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E/H notebook the sound works like it never has before in any laptop or desktop that I've run any version of Linux on. I can plug in earphones and it shuts off the laptop speaks and sends the output to the headphones. Unplug the headphones and the laptop speakers send out the sound. The mic works great too.

On the Jaunty partition of this laptop I had trouble with PulseAudio so I removed it and all my sound problems disappeared.

[Exodist]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

I have a SB Audigy2 and seems that it doesnt autodetect the correct hardware options for me. Ubuntu has a Autodetect listed in the Multimedia config, but Kubuntu doesnt and I cant seem to get any sound to work on the desktop.

[jcphil]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

I am getting nothing after testing aplay -l (only the Soundblaster card showed). I played with volumes under padevchooser. Nothing helped. While playing an mp3 on Amarok, I could see the bars moving, as if sound were coming out, but I heard nothing. No sound from any device since the upgrade. The sound modules are all loaded. I played with the standard volume control by raising and lowering the volume for every channel. This doesn't make any sense. Why should audio suddenly be so hard?

[dibl]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

dibl@karmic:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:  Ubuntu karmic (development branch)
Release:    9.10
Codename:    karmic
dibl@karmic:~$ uname -a
Linux karmic 2.6.31-12-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 7 19:37:12 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
dibl@karmic:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: STAC92xx Digital [STAC92xx Digital]
 Subdevices: 1/1
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Looks pretty much OK here, as of today.

[MetalHellsAngel]

Re: How is Sound in Karmic?

Well I just wanted to report that I installed Karmic today, and was pleasantly surprised to find that my sound experience vastly improved from jaunty.

I have sound in java & flash, My microphone works in skype, and everything just sounds great. I didn't even have to install pulseaudio and I'm very happy about that.

So I don't know what the difference is but I'm very glad it all works