[mythtv-users] MythTV and Pulseaudio

Another Sillyname anothersname at googlemail.com
Mon Dec 21 10:06:57 UTC 2009


2009/12/21 Ross Campbell <ross.campbell at gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca> wrote:
>> I'd argue this Pulseaudio and
>> Mythtv discussion is far more on topic that most of the (OT at least)
>> chatter that goes on on this list.
>
> It is... For better or worse, Linux distros are doing deep integration
> of pulseaudio in the desktop environments, and the simple "disable
> pulse audio by doing X" is turning into this mess:
> http://ubuntu-ky.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8284273 with a
> batch of caveats and broken pieces that some people like me may
> actually care about.
>
> Myth disables pulseaudio on startup and if you exec any programs that
> expect to use pulse for sound, they may or may not fall back to
> another sound server. Example: emulator works from commandline, hangs
> when exec'ed from mythgame due to which version of libsdl1.2debian-*
> is installed (hint: libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio is the "correct one"
> for ubuntu, but that causes no sound and a hang on exit of sdlmame or
> presumably any app that uses sdl for sound...! install
> libsdl1.2debian-all and apps that use sdl for sound will be able to
> fall back to alsa).
>
> I presume the experimental pulseaudio patch that allows the flag below
> made it into 0.22, right?
>
>   EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1 mythfrontend
>
> Read a post somewhere suggesting that myth should only disable
> pulseaudio when the internal player is playing something back... and
> re-enable it when it's done. That would at least ensure that any 3rd
> party apps exec'ed from inside myth wouldn't have any sound issues...
> barring actual pulseaudio support, that's a better workaround IMHO.
>
> I know all the details behind the linux sound server holy wars and
> don't want to incite a riot. Personally, I wish jackd had won, but it
> didn't... and my days of having the free time to hack together my own
> massively customized linux distribution are drawing to a close. The
> relevant point is that not just ignoring pulseaudio as a supported
> soundserver, but DISABLING IT by default seems like it is only going
> to create more issues as time goes by.
>
> I sincerely hope the pulseaudio devs,  mythtv devs, and ubuntu devs
> can all get together and map out the functionality requirements, and
> code changed to make pulseaudio work with myth out of the box in the
> future.
>
> -Ross
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> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

Sorry I have to throw my 2c in here.

Myth DOES NOT disable pulse by default.

I run a Fedora 11 frontend, with MythTV 0.22-1 from rpmfusion on top of it.

I have Pulseaudio 9.15-17 installed and alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
1.0.21-2 also installed.

My sound setup in mythtv is

Audio Output Device ALSA:Default

Passthrough Output Device ALSA:iec958:{ AESO 0x02 }

Max Audio Channels Stereo

Upmix Passive

Enable AC3 to SPDIF passthrough --> Checked

Enable DTS to SPDIF passthrough --> Unchecked

Aggressive Sound Card Buffering --> Unchecked

------  Next Page

Use Internal Volume Controls --> Unchecked

---------------------------------------

I output ALL my audio to an external amplifier via a SPDIF connection.

---------------------------------------

I also have pulseaudio-module-lirc installed

The reason I know for certain that pulse is NOT getting turned off is
I added the following to my lircrc file to control the volume....

begin pulseaudio

begin
     remote = mceusb
     prog = pulseaudio
     button = VolUp
     config = volume-up
end

begin
     remote = SonyBDRemote
     prog = pulseaudio
     button = l1
     config = volume-up
end

begin
     remote = mceusb
     prog = pulseaudio
     button = VolDown
     config = volume-down
end

begin
     remote = SonyBDRemote
     prog = pulseaudio
     button = l2
     config = volume-down
end

begin
      remote = mceusb
      prog = pulseaudio
      button = Mute
      config = mute-toggle
end

begin
      remote = SonyBDRemote
      prog = pulseaudio
      button = l3
      config = mute-toggle
end

end pulseaudio

As all my audio outputs via SPDIF this used to mean I had to use two
remotes, one to control myth and my normal amp remote to control my
volume, frankly this was a pain in the ar*e.

The above configuration allowed me to control all the volumes (except
full Dolby) using my mythtv remote.

There is no audio delay except in the first second or so when you
start to play a new avi and it has to sync the audio and the picture.

The path for the audio output is as follows....

MythTV -->  ALSA  -->  Pulseaudio.

It all works fine and without problems.


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