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Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

In the early 2000's pulseaudio was under the first sound GUI that worked for HDMI connections (for me).
Nothing else (I could find) had a viable GUI, or even just accurate comprehensible documentation. Just sayin'.

Last edited by Somewhat Reticent (2017-06-13 06:34:03)

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,316  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Well, we are 17 years later.   An interesting personal story but not really a Devuan support question.  Should probably get moved to OT . . .

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Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Unless someone thinks substituting apulse and/or ALSA is a better idea?

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,316  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Unless someone thinks substituting apulse and/or ALSA is a better idea?

If this turns into a discussion regarding apulse inclusion in the Devuan repos etc.it can be moved to Discussion > Devuan.  apulse has been discussed on the dng mailing list and Steve Pusser has already gotten apluse to fool FF 52.  So it's on our radar.  If someone tries to install apluse and can't get it working then that is a legitimate Support issue.  Welcome to the forum btw. 

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Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Say a user has a speaker system that accepts digital audio over optical cable, or RCA cable from HDMI-fed display.
analog stereo via RCA from HDMI device (sorry!)
(My headphones handle analog stereo via 3.5mm; just not the same.)
What does ALSA (with or without apulse) offer?
Hotplug auto-sense?
Format selection (FLAC, AAC, DTS, AC3 … 5.1, stereo)?
List-and-select sound-circuits, source/sink connections?
A fully-functional GUI or Full Manual?
Easily-edited self-documenting plain-text scripts?

Last edited by Somewhat Reticent (2017-06-04 21:14:33)

greenjeans

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Registered: 2017-04-07

Posts: 541  

Website

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

or analog stereo via RCA from HDMI device.

Well that part is simple and should work fine with alsa, if your speaker/receiver setup takes a conventional RCA input, just make or buy a patch cable and use the headphone output from your computer.

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Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

This speaker system only does AC3/5.1 via optical cable or RCA … and sometimes surround sound is significant.
The computer's 3.5mm jacks do simple stereo (and mic) only; no digital-out RCA jack.
(Some time ago I remember a nice writeup that noted dmix is useful for ALSA …)
On other systems,
I may want one app to send AC3/5.1 to speakers while another brings stereo to headphones.
Can ALSA handle that?
(note - my original post was about ordinary users' accessibility to controls, not a promotion of PA.)

Last edited by Somewhat Reticent (2017-06-04 21:16:29)

Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

For that matter, is there a scaled-down standalone version of JACK?

Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Note to self:  VLC - audio device HDMI (not "default") brings SPDIF option, might just work (without PA!).

kedaha

Member

Registered: 2017-08-04

Posts: 2  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

I've been following the development of Devuan since the beginning and it's got me interested. This is my first post so I've chosen this topic because I'm an OSS4 user and intend to post about it some time.

Somewhat Reticent

Member

Registered: 2017-04-06

Posts: 103  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Welcome to the neighborhood, kedaha.  May your perspective enrich the community.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,486  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Not sure what you mean by scaled-down, but if you want a fairly easy way to control connections in jack, try qjackctl. There's no support for jack in firefox, but there might be a way to do it through PA.

kedaha

Member

Registered: 2017-08-04

Posts: 2  

Re: OSS, ALSA, pulseaudio, JACK, ...

Welcome to the neighborhood, kedaha.  May your perspective enrich the community.

Thank you!
I've used OSS4 for several years, since Debian squeeze, in fact. OSS4 is not available in Debian9 but of course, is available in Devuan, which I 've now changed my Debian jessie to, where it continues to sound very good.