On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 11:03:13AM -0400, Norbert Zeh wrote:
Things I observed (on Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, Arch...so it's not distro-specific) were way too low input (mic) and output volumes even when setting the volume controls to 100%. I really wanted to use PA because it offers something ALSA does not: simultaneous audio streams from different applications (i.e., when firing up Windows in a VirtualBox, it does not hog my audio). So I googled for hours, read through forum posts, etc. and all I could find were hacks that either didn't work at all or resulted in the right volume but at completely unacceptable distortion levels.
hey funny you mention it, when I came from ubuntu I configured alsa/dmix on arch and for the first time since I was using linux I heard sound from multiple applications at once... we could just settle that the depth of support varies between the two. Also, duplicate efforts are a common linux problem, and maybe some people would like to see pa devs on alsa/dmix. Saying such a thing is ridiculous though, since one will not be able to change things. I use xdm which doesn't depend on mesa/opengl stuff yet, nor pa, and it's actually possible to get most features that come with gdm, eg. session chooser, working with xdm. Whenever I want to get comfortable, I also try to get in touch with upstream when I think about adding features or have patches already, and I'm pretty much addicted to the additional effort linux is asking from me. I hope I won't stop learning new stuff soon, I might just go and buy such a pro audio card for teh arghs to patch the hell out of pa. Okay, I'm not *that* bored... :) cheers! mar77i