Disabling pulseaudio

[Len Ovens]

On Sun, July 28, 2013 1:14 pm, Jarno Suni wrote:

> I tried to explain that if you do not run PulseAudio, alsamixer and
> xfce4-mixer plugin work as expected. I have tested it by Intel HDA. As for
> the xfce mixer, there is more about the issue here:
> https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8291

Interesting... I did some testing. Turning pulse off in the session start
up does not keep it from starting. Second, The pulse configuration does
not stay where it is put. Plugging in headphones takes a HW device that is
turned off turns it on in pulse (I think this is a bug). Anything at all
that tries to communicate with pulse using dbus starts pulse even if it is
turned off. While pulse has a device turned off, you are right the alsa
mixer works as intended.

sudo chmod -x /usr/bin/pulseaudio seems to be the only thing that works.
Now I know one more reason not to use hda audio. Disabling PA is not an
optimal solution either. The reality is that pulse is the most seamless
method of using most desktop applications. There are other ways, yes, but
none have any good usability out of the box, they all require fiddling.

My multi track card is not controlled at all by PA. I am not sure why. It
should however, be possible to tell Pulse not to control the card through
configuration...

I am not sure of the best solution. I am thinking one of two ways:
1) unload module-udev-detect and any module-alsa-card. Then run everything
as if jack is the only card. Maybe even run jackdbus at session start.
qjackctl should still be able to stop jackdbus (not jackd) if the user
wishes to change latency or HW.
2) only use PA on a card jack never touches. Use an external cable if
needed to run PA audio to/through jack. (people with FW audio have done
this for ages)

Anyway, getting rid of pulse for some programs that claim to work with
jack (like audacity, that a lot of people use as part of their audio
workflow) and don't really, is painful. Going with alsa is also somewhat
painful. Pulse is what works with a lot of things, it needs to be fixed. A
change in PA config should not change itself and any device should be
settable as SW levels only.


-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net