[arch-general] *** GMX Spamverdacht *** Re: Muting internal speakers

[Heiko Baums]

Am Fri, 15 Jun 2012 20:00:10 +0200
schrieb Nelson Marambio <nelsonmarambio at gmx.de>:

> Heiko, by installing GNOME, pulseaudio was installed as dependency I 
> guess.

That's one of the problems I have with PA, indeed. ;-)

> So please don't blame for starting with pulse, ok ?

I don't blame you, but I blame the people who always at once suggest
installing and using PA as the ultimate solution and answer for
everything. And I blame the developers who force the users to
installing PA as a dependency.

If PA is working for you, you want to deal with PA and PA solves your
problem, it's totally OK for me.

> ^^ After
> all I am confused if my installation uses ALSA or pulse now. I
> installed ALSA but the ALSAmixer shows me the volume level of
> pulse ???

I guess alsamixer only shows its own volume level. PA can set its own
volume level which is, of course, relative to the ALSA level. Just turn
up the volume to the highest level in PA and switch the volume level in
alsamixer. I guess then you will have a clue.

> If you made the experience that pulse failed where ALSA succeeded
> there is nothing to say against it. But I have to deal with my
> consumer-card (it's really an HDA-chip by Intel) and thus I can't
> contribute something relevant.
> 
> What I learned from this discussion
> 
> 1) there are several sound-layer (OSS, ALSA, pulse, Jack (?))
> 2) several layer can work together but also can result conflicts 
> (nothing but logical)

That's absolutely right. With one exception, OSS and ALSA are two
different sound drivers on the same level. OSS is the older one, and I
don't know if there's still an up-to-date version. ALSA has a OSS
plugin for compatibility reasons. PulseAudio and Jack are two sound
servers which are on the layer on top of ALSA or OSS.

Heiko