Pulseaudio : lots of issues, how can I help?

[Dan Williams]

On Fri, 2008-09-12 at 00:01 +0200, Karel Zak wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 12:48:57PM -0400, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-09-11 at 17:40 +0100, Bill Crawford wrote:
> > > If you have multi-channel hardware that mixes itself, then using
> > > PulseAudio sort of defeats the purpose of that hardware ;o)
> > 
> > You're absolutely right... if all you're using PulseAudio for is basic
> > mixing. But as soon as you need/want something like per-app volume
> > control, network transport, audio stream redirection, or audio device
> > hotplugging then you want PulseAudio.
> 
>  How many **ordinary** Fedora users really need these **advanced**
>  features?
> 
>  For example I have never had any serious SW problem with sound on
>  Linux. And I use it for more than 10 years...

I have USB speakers at home.  I do not have them at work.  I used to
have to change the alsa default device in system-config-soundcard and
then quit all open apps just to get the sound to come out of the
hotplugged USB speakers.  Flash used to only play to the default alsa
soundcard.  That completely totally sucks.  Mac OS X and Windows
seamlessly redirect the output to the USB speakers when they are plugged
in, and when I unplug them the sound switches back to onboard instantly.
USB headphones and webcams with integrated microphones (FW iSight for
example) are also used quite often.  Those get hotplugged and thus they
should just work.

I could never, ever, ever get plain ALSA to handle any sort of
hotplugging automagically.  It just works with Pulse.  I shouldn't have
to hand-edit random config files in both /etc and ~, reload kernel
modules so they can get different ALSA device number module parameters,
and restart apps just to get sound to go where I want it.

Dan