[arch-general] Basic questions about Linux's sound system

[Leonid Isaev]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 07:24:29AM +0100, Peter Nabbefeld wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> semms I'm missing some basic parts of the sound system. I've been told, ALSA
> is for the hardware, pulseaudio is for the infrastructure, and bluez
> provides for virtual bluetooth devices, so I understand it should look like
> this (ASCII graphics, please use monospaced font for viewing):
> 
> 
> 
>    +------------+   +-----------+
>    | Rosegarden |   |   Totem   |
>    +------------+   +-----------+   +-----------------+
>    |   Jack     |   | GStreamer |   | Appl. using PA  |
>    +------------+---+-----------+---+-----------------+
>    |                Pulseaudio (PA)                   |
>    +--------------------+---+-------------------------+
>    |        ALSA        |   |         Bluez           |
>    +--------------------+   +-------------------------+
> 
> 
> This would imply, that ALSA cannot "see" Bluetooth devices, but that seems
> not to be the fact, so there's probably a misconfiguration on my laptop.
> There's a bridge (bluez-alsa-git) in the AUR, but I haven't installed it, so
> why can ALSA see my headset?

ALSA "sees" audio devices as reported by the kernel. If the kernel / udev
registers your bluetooth headset as an audio device, you should be able to
control it through ALSA. This is similar to USB network adapters, for example.

Cheers,

-- 
Leonid Isaev