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erdos

Member

Registered: 2018-06-04

Posts: 88  

ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

hi,

youtube has no sound on a fresh install of ascii and firefox (68.4-1 esr)

erdos@devuan:/etc/X11$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 65536 [100%] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 65536 [100%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Front Left: Capture 5730 [9%] [off]
  Front Right: Capture 5730 [9%] [off]
erdos@devuan:/etc/X11$ amixer set Master 50%
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 32768 [50%] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 32768 [50%] [on]

any ideas?

bgstack15

Member

Registered: 2018-02-04

Posts: 205  

Re: ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

Do a reality check. Does the audio work in other programs? Does the audio work on other sites. Do the speakers or headphones work when plugged in to another system that plays sound? Also, sometimes I get confused about how many different levels to set in the various mixer programs. Maybe there's a different slider you need to adjust as well as master.

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erdos

Member

Registered: 2018-06-04

Posts: 88  

Re: ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

I looked at volume settings again, it seems that pulseaudio is the default sound server, and i changed the sound output device (default set to build-in digital audio stereo HDMI), now i got sound in ff.

it's strange because i installed devuan last night and at first i don't remember seeing PA settings in volume control, i've installed Kodi afterwards, maybe Kodi pulled in PA as dependencies.  but FF definitely had no sound before installing kodi, if FF default to use PA?

and how do i use ALSA instead of PA in ascii?

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

if FF default to use PA?

The firefox-esr package in ASCII can produce sound without PA but if PA is running then it will use it.

See what's invited PA to your party:

aptitude why pulseaudio

You may have to continue down the dependency chain for a bit.

how do i use ALSA instead of PA in ascii?

If you can't remove the PA package then you can try to stop it from starting, for example: https://kodi.wiki/view/PulseAudio/HOW-T … for_Ubuntu

You may have to also copy the pulseadui.desktop file from /etc/xdg/autostart/ to ~/.config/autostart/ and add Hidden=true to the end of the file.

Alternatively, keep PA installed & running and use pavucontrol to set the default output device.

I've seen several forum members claim audio sounds better with pure ALSA but I am strongly of the opinion that this is just confirmation bias. [/troll]

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

czeekaj

Member

Registered: 2019-06-12

Posts: 154  

Re: ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

Only complaint I hear from Alsa users is latency. However, I think it would be so slight that you would never notice it under normal use.
I'm just glad with people saying firefox won't work without pulse. Yet it continues to work without it on esr Just don't like seeing those empty pulse folders popping up everytime i make a new profile.

SmokeyGrey

Member

Registered: 2019-04-15

Posts: 25  

Re: ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

Removing pulseaudio should be as simple as

apt-get purge pulseaudio

Note that if you remove pulseaudio you MUST purge it. Otherwise configuration files are left behind that break alsa.

Pulseaudios default settings are fine for most users. I honestly wouldn't worry about it unless it gives you problems.

With my desktop hardware, a 44.1 khz sampling rate gives me noise issues. All my audio needs to be re-sampled to 48 khz. With pulseaudio the latency is too high, and the re-sample quality could be better. When I tried bringing down the latency and increasing the re-sample quality the resource usage increased significantly. Alsa doesn't give me those issues, and I find the configuration files significantly easier to understand and modify.

My ancient laptop also performs better without pulseaudio, and I suspect others with older devices would benefit from a pure alsa setup as well.

Last edited by SmokeyGrey (2020-03-08 13:47:32)

erdos

Member

Registered: 2018-06-04

Posts: 88  

Re: ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

aptitude why pulseaudio

erdos@devuan:/etc/X11$ aptitude why pulseaudio
i   task-desktop      Recommends task-xfce-desktop | task-cinnamon-desktop | task-kde-desktop
                                  | task-lxqt-desktop | task-mate-desktop                   
i A task-xfce-desktop Recommends gnome-orca                                                 
i A gnome-orca        Depends    speech-dispatcher (>= 0.8)                                 
i A speech-dispatcher Recommends pulseaudio

I use 'xfce' as DE, it seems xfce depends on PA

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: ascii/firefox youtube has no sound

it seems xfce depends on PA

Yes, that has been discussed before: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2545

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power