Please, Ubuntu, do not embarrass me again!

[Rashkae]

W. Scott Lockwood III wrote:

> 
> The thing that really kills me about pulseaudio is, all it does in
> reality is add latency. If people just used alsa or add in the real
> current OSS, they get much better sound.

Oh, pulse does so much more than you give it credit for:

I know it's not perfect, and some people/hardware/software combinations 
have issues that need to be worked out, but some of the things that 
pulse gives you back in return:

Network transparency (used to work with esound as well, but pulse just 
gives you more options in terms of security/authentication (though very 
poorly documented, really needs much more work so that interested people 
can understand how it works.)

Mixing of multiple sound sources.  (as I said in an earlier message, 
this has never affected me, but not all hardware can mix audio, and 
requires software mixing so that you can have sound from multiple sources)

On-the-fly changing of default audio output, with nice gui 
configuration, without having to specify device in each application. 
Plug in usb headphones, change your output device from the pulse gui 
config widget of your choice, and now all apps that output sound to 
default alsa or pulse device will be outputting sound to the correct device.

Setting sound output profile so audio gets downmixed (or upmixed) 
correctly.  Tell pulse that you have stereo speakers, and now even 5.1 
audio FLAC from mplayer will get downmixed to 2 channel stereo corrected 
within pulse (something that I could net get working correctly with just 
alsa, though I suspect there were obscure configuration invocation I 
could made to alsa.conf that would have also achieved this.)


Those are just the benefits that I get myself.. I'm sure there are 
several more.  Those who had difficulties with the change can certainly 
say that ubuntu once again jumped the gun implementing new tech that 
wasn't 'ready' yet, (but lets face it, that's exactly what ubuntu is all 
about.)  But there is no doubt in my mind that pulse, or something like 
it, is the way to go moving forward.

Looking back, I'm the guy who was upset when lpr was replaced with 
cups... how attitudes change :)