PulseAudio Adds Memfd Transport Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PulseAudio Adds Memfd Transport Support

PulseAudio gained support for utilizing the Linux kernel's memfd as a transport mechanism as spearheaded by the systemd/KDBUS crew...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PulseAudio-Memfd-Support

[mlau]

While this is neat, I'd prefer if they fixed some basic issues, like the loud crackling sound that comes out of the speakers every time a PA instance is launched. You know, the basics...

[schmidtbag]

While this is neat, I'd prefer if they fixed some basic issues, like the loud crackling sound that comes out of the speakers every time a PA instance is launched. You know, the basics...

I've never had experience with that... I've had latency and stuttering problems, but no crackling. Sure, my personal anecdotes aren't definitive, but I've used PA on maybe 20 different audio chipsets (whether on ARM or x86, discrete cards or integrated, analog or SPDIF, HDMI or Bluetooth, and so on) and none of them have had this problem.

[mmstick]

While this is neat, I'd prefer if they fixed some basic issues, like the loud crackling sound that comes out of the speakers every time a PA instance is launched. You know, the basics...

Sounds more like you have an issue with ALSA rather than PulseAudio.

[SaucyJack]

Sounds more like you have an issue with ALSA rather than PulseAudio.

No, I've had the same issue and flushing the pile of crap that is PulseAudio was the solution. Serious question... considering it devastates audio quality, and frequently has issues that take forever to fix (If ever) why do people like pulseaudio?

Edit: It should be noted that using a fully up to date Arch I don't have that particular problem with that particular program anymore. But due to the issues mentioned I remove it from all of my machines now anyway.

[AsuMagic]

No, I've had the same issue and flushing the pile of crap that is PulseAudio was the solution. Serious question... considering it devastates audio quality, and frequently has issues that take forever to fix (If ever) why do people like pulseaudio?

Edit: It should be noted that using a fully up to date Arch I don't have that particular problem with that particular program anymore. But due to the issues mentioned I remove it from all of my machines now anyway.

Can you actually use ALSA with multiple programs at once without special hardware?
I'm never gonna move away from PulseAudio if I can't get all my programs to work with its audio AND have multiple applications that can run at once.

[mmstick]

No, I've had the same issue and flushing the pile of crap that is PulseAudio was the solution. Serious question... considering it devastates audio quality, and frequently has issues that take forever to fix (If ever) why do people like pulseaudio?

Edit: It should be noted that using a fully up to date Arch I don't have that particular problem with that particular program anymore. But due to the issues mentioned I remove it from all of my machines now anyway.

Whoever told you that has misguided you. PulseAudio does not devastate audio quality, and I should know as I use audiophile headphones with a dedicated DAC and AMP. If the source sound is the same frequency as your output, PulseAudio doesn't manipulate it in any way. Any issues you are experiencing with your setup is not caused by PulseAudio but a very poor ALSA driver. Pulseaudio simply makes it easier to notice these ALSA bugs because it puts stress on the ALSA driver.

[gens]

Whoever told you that has misguided you. PulseAudio does not devastate audio quality, and I should know as I use audiophile headphones with a dedicated DAC and AMP. If the source sound is the same frequency as your output, PulseAudio doesn't manipulate it in any way. Any issues you are experiencing with your setup is not caused by PulseAudio but a very poor ALSA driver. Pulseaudio simply makes it easier to notice these ALSA bugs because it puts stress on the ALSA driver.

PA does use a good resample, the ffmpeg one

not that anybody would notice the difference (not even you with your fancy headphones)

the crackling with PA is due to how it "manages" latency, that has absolutely nothing to do with the ALSA drivers

if PA was made properly from the start it wouldn't have any problems with alsa drivers, as in example all the other such programs never had (see JACK)

whoever told you anything is misguided

on topic:
this is a stupid idea.
there is nothing wrong with ringbuffers, while this adds overhead for absolutely no benefit.
not to mention the complications coming from poorly written clients, that ringbuffers just don't have

[haagch]

the loud crackling sound that comes out of the speakers every time a PA instance is launched.

Have you looked into whether your sound card does that when waking up from a power saving mode?

[SaucyJack]

Whoever told you that has misguided you. PulseAudio does not devastate audio quality, and I should know as I use audiophile headphones with a dedicated DAC and AMP. If the source sound is the same frequency as your output, PulseAudio doesn't manipulate it in any way. Any issues you are experiencing with your setup is not caused by PulseAudio but a very poor ALSA driver. Pulseaudio simply makes it easier to notice these ALSA bugs because it puts stress on the ALSA driver.

I think you're the one who is misguided. Pulse eats bits to do completely unnecessary software mixing on everything. You can find music players which have options to pass through to alsa directly (and you wont get the degradation) and that's actually when I discovered why my music sounded so bad on linux vs windows. And my very poor ALSA driver works amazing well. Sorry, but if A works perfectly, and after you add B it breaks, it is not As fault. In other words it's pulseaudio's fault and your attempt to spin it into being ALSA fault is a little irritating.