esd, sound (was Re: Suggestions for Breezy... )

[Øivind Hoel]

On 6/6/05, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Justin Mason [2005-06-02 10:15 -0700]:
> > Alexandre FRANKE writes:
> > > > Additionally, I think it would be a good idea to use dmix for sound
> > > > rather than using a sound server, as dmix doesn't require applications
> > > > to be written for it specifically as does esd.  I've noticed many people
> > > > have been asking about setting up Hoary to allow non-esd sound, so this
> > > > seems like something that should be considered for Breezy.
> > >
> > > Gnome 2.12 (which I think will be used in Breezy, as Gnome's schedule
> > > is almost the same as Ubuntu's) no longer uses esd but gstreamer.  See
> > > http://www.gnome.org for further information about that.
> >
> > eek -- in my opinion dropping esd/polypaudio would be bad!
> >
> > if I recall correctly, according to ALSA people, automated setup of dmix
> > will not always work, due to differences in sound hardware requiring
> > different "magic numbers" in the asound.conf file for period_size,
> > buffer_size, rate, periods etc.  In my experience, incorrect values here
> > on my Thinkpad T40 *almost* work but produce stuttering and crackling as
> > soon as the CPU becomes busy or X activity takes place.
> 
> Currently, Breezy does not use any sound daemon at all, but is
> configured to direct gstreamer -> ALSA dmix output. I did not hear any
> complaints for now, but OTOH not many people use Breezy so far.

I tested breezy up until and slightly into the xorg modularization
process, and at the latter end of the period I had some issues with
sound output using the esd sink in my multimedia settings. Sound from
all my gstreamer apps played, but became quite garbled. My system
didn't live long enough after that to submit a real bug report, but
I'll get on the breezy bus again soon and try to debug things if the
problem is still there. I'm not sure whether what you described above
would cause the kind of problem I had, but atleast I got an
"aha"-moment while reading it ;-)


-- 
Cheers, Øivind Hoel