If you do need to use apulse, it's just 'apulse firefox'. No need for asoundrc. The only time I need to use apulse is if tor-browser uses audio and then I try to use audio in firefox-esr.

I do not know, what is special about Devuan, but is was difficult to find a browser, which does not work with ALSA.
Firefox, Chromium, Epiphany, Chrome, Brave, Min - everything works without apulse.
Seamonkey does need apulse to work with ALSA.

What is more, Mate sound applet works with ALSA after removal of pulseaudio, but Xfce sound applet disappeared.
Mate Desktop, is, of course, very special. If you remove PulseAudio, it will install PipeWire.
If you remove them both, it will enable ALSA for Mate apps.

$ sudo apt-mark manual libpulse0 libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulsedsp 
$ sudo apt-mark hold pulseaudio* pipewire* 

$ sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pipewire pipewire-bin pipewire-pulse

$ fuser -av $(find /dev/snd -type c 2>/dev/null)
$ killall pulseaudio
$ fuser -av $(find /dev/snd -type c 2>/dev/null)

However, if you want to use mic with Firefox (with Discord) , you do need apulse and a special ~/.asoundrc with dmix, dsnoop, etc.

Thanks for the tips and for bringing Qasmixer back into view!

zephyr

It's a nice app, and only uses 43kb RAM. I have added it to my XFCE session autostart, but for some reason the --tray switch is ignored so I have to manually close it (to tray) after every log-in. The minimised icon appears in the "Status Tray Plugin", so make sure that's added to the XFCE panel, or you won't see it.

I've also added keyboard shortcuts for the volume control buttons on my Thinkpad, so that they work with ALSA:

Audio raise volume:

amixer -q set Master '5%+'

Audio lower volume:

amixer -q set Master '5%-'

Audio mute:

amixer -q set Master toggle

cheers

zephyr

I've already experimented.
In fact, maybe my reason is my Trinity DE.
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=6118

It just probably makes sense to check the availability of I/O in Firefox (about: support in the address bar)

rm -rf /usr/share/kpackage/kcms/kcm_pulseaudiio /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsecommon-16.1.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstpulseaudio.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/avkys/libAudioDevice_pulseaudio.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio

Hello.

I don't really understand why you need to manually remove these directories with files, if the command

apt autoremove --purge

does it?

I'm glad that the Devuan forum is such a friendly and  helpful place.

But I've chimed in because no one has mentioned wireplumber.

It does behave like pulse as a sound/media server, so may not be apparent if you're only running one stream at a time.

I also still use ~.xsessionrc to load the sound apps when the system starts at login to plasma/kde.

I purged my system of anything related to pulse except pipewire-pulse, and I think libpulseaudio.so

And also removed the startup scrip.

here is a copy of some notes I've kept (copied from these forums), including the ~.xsessionrc start script from this forum as well.

Those who are familiar with setting their sound card with alsa will have no problem removing pulse...and yes, I've removed it with no issues on actual installations. Just run these commands...

apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio*

apt-get remove --purge pavucontrol*

apt-get autoremove

After that, set your soundcard with alsa (if needed), reboot, and bam! Sound without pulsification! tongue big_smile
######################################################################################################################
rm -rf /usr/share/kpackage/kcms/kcm_pulseaudio /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsecommon-16.1.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstpulseaudio.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/avkys/libAudioDevice_pulseaudio.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2934

apt-get install aumix menu alsa-lib alsa-plugins alsa-utils
$ alsamixer
unmute channels with letter m

Ensure alsa-utils is installed.

login to terminal as root, set sound card and volumes:
=>alsamixer
F6 sound card, select "whataver appears other than default"
set master, speaker, headphone to 100% (or whatever)
exit
=>alsactl store

You may want to install a nice panel volume app: volumeicon-alsa
You may want to install a nice mixer: qasmixer

You can purge pulseaudio packages, but libpulse0* packages are required, do not remove these.   
The dependencies of Pulse with the desktop are due to installing the desktop meta-packages.  
Thus when you try to purge Pulse, it appears that it wants to remove "the desktop".  
Not going to say or recommend purging Pulse (but I do with no problems).  

When installing desktop with --no-install-recommends, you can more control what gets installed (no Pulse).   

Dont know about Firefox requirements.

I have run LXQT, XFCE, KDE successfully without Pulse (no Firefox).

EDIT: i just found another elegant mpv player that does quite the same as above similarly for firefox quantum!

https://github.com/woodruffw/ff2mpv

You can see what packages depend on a package via rdepends:

apt rdepends gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio

And you can "try-out" a purge of a package by use of the -s option, to see what would be removed along with it:

apt -s purge  gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio

apt policy pulseaudio

# check available outputs
aplay -l

ALthough it took a little while to find the answer for HDMI devices showing up before the one you wish to use, the answer is a one liner.
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=110572#p525601

The method I use is

E485:~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf                                         
options snd-hda-intel index=1
E485:~$

It's also possible to use ~/.asoundrc to set the default card, antiX has a tool that will do this to switch cards in their PA-free desktop.

See also https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture#Alternative_method

So yeah, ALSA by itself can be a tricky little devil. Which is why PA is so omnipresent.

Really good DE such as TDE and LXDE don't depend on PA.

/home/glenn/.xsessionrc...

# kill any existing pipewire instance to restore sound
pkill -u "$USER" -fx /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse 1>/dev/null 2>&1
pkill -u "$USER" -fx /usr/bin/wireplumber 1>/dev/null 2>&1
pkill -u "$USER" -fx /usr/bin/pipewire 1>/dev/null 2>&1

exec /usr/bin/pipewire &

# wait for pipewire to start before attempting to start related daemons
while [ "$(pgrep -f /usr/bin/pipewire)" = "" ] ; do
   sleep 1
done

exec /usr/bin/wireplumber &

exec /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse &

I hope this helps

The default full install of Peppermint Devuan Daedalus xfce came with PulseAudio installed and enabled.  Early on, I replaced PulseAudio with PipeWire, to make it consistent with my other distro of choice -- antiX.  Of course, PipeWire contains a version (hopefully improved) of PulseAudio in the form of pipewire-pulse.  WIth PipeWire enabled, I had audio from my music players and from Firefox. 

On any distros I have used, I have generally turned off PulseAudio (and now PipeWire) because I don't need any of the multistream mixing features and whatnot.  I listen to one thing at a time.  And I have always found pure ALSA to be the least troublesome, without the other layers piled on top of it.

So, in Peppermint Daedalus I turned off PipeWire, but left it installed in case I might need it as a future dependency or find a truly good use for it.  I try to keep unnecessary running processes to a minimum.

As expected, my music players worked wonderfully piped directly through ALSA.  However, there was no detectable sound from Firefox.  I was puzzled, as antiX is running on Debian packages, and -- in my install -- had PipeWire disabled by default.  Yet Firefox produced sound just fine in antiX. 

Looking into this, I discovered that antiX had the ALSA equalizer/preamp plugin installed by default.  So I added that to my Daedalus.  Still no sound from Firefox.
I dug further into antiX and discovered the predefined /etc/asound.conf file which configured the ALSA preamp/equalizer plugin. 

So I simply copied over this asound.conf file into Daedalus, but didn't immediately get any sound from FIrefox. Unlike in antiX, I did NOT have a preamp slider in QasMixer.  I could find no configurator in QasMixer to enable the preamp slider.  (The equalizer, however, was immediately available.)  I tried opening and closing the equalizer a few times, rebooting a couple of times, and somehow the preamp slider simply appeared (I don't know how, but I hope to find out).

Once I had the slider, I found that applying about 11% preamp produced audio from Firefox that matched levels from my music players.  This turns out to be the same level of preamp that antiX has applied by default.

I don't know whether any of this rehash is of any value to you, but I thought I'd provide it just in case it might.  I don't pretend to be an expert in this area.

If you get a working preamp control in ALSA and adding preamp does not produce sound in Firefox, then indeed you have a different issue to address, or you can simply let PipeWire/Pulse process that sound for you.

I wonder if this has something to do with why Firefox is silent with sndio when using alsa-sndio? Firefox creates a sndio stream and you can control it. It's just silent. I'll have to test if I can use libasound's pre-amp with it.

Thanks for reporting back with your findings. I believe you've provided some useful information.