Am Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:05:25 +0000 schrieb Fons Adriaensen <fons@linuxaudio.org>:
PA is for 'consumer' use, its scope ends at ITU 5.1 or so. It doesn't support any serious multichannel card (like the the comlete RME series, up to 64+64 channels). Users of such cards don't need or want PA, so it's really not a problem at all.
That's principally what I said. The problem is that several distros and DEs like Gnome depend on PulseAudio as far as I know. This is what I'm concerned about. Arch Linux and Xfce, what I'm using, fortunately don't depend on it. If PulseAudio was generally only optional and if its developers wouldn't try to declare it as a standard, I just wouldn't care.
If you use such cards you probably have Jack running, and if you really want PA you can configure it as a Jack client.
I'm using an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96, so one of the cheapest semi-professional audio cards of this kind. And I admit I primarily use it for listening to music, watching videos etc. because of its sound quality. But you're right I don't want and need PulseAudio. Heiko