ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

igorzwx · 2025-11-05 17:06:33

Your ALSA is not pure, To get pure ALSA, you have to purge pulseaudio from libasound2-plugins
_https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=7523

It is not enough to remove pulseaudio, you have to remove other crap to get "pure alsa".

Mate sound applet works with ALSA without problems.

EQ is needed for semi-deaf users to enhance high frequencies.

Last edited by igorzwx (2025-11-05 17:12:03)

greenjeans · 2025-11-05 17:25:46

My Alsa is fine, thanks. Sounds great in fact, sitting here listening to Iron Maiden right now, as the artists intended it to sound.

An EQ is for evening out the frequency response to match the inverse of their personal Fletcher-Munson curve, which of course differs in all individuals as much or more than their fingerprints do. This is basic simple stuff every real tech learns year one.

I believe in giving a user the choice to decide for themselves what to install, my job in my projects is simply to give them a solid working base to build on.

igorzwx · 2025-11-05 17:41:00

Because of your personal Fletcher-Munson curve you may not hear the difference between your ALSA and pure ALSA

greenjeans · 2025-11-06 01:28:41

FYI to all reading you do NOT have to install or compile various random github packages to have a working Alsa system or to have it sound good, or to have sound in Firefox. Don't blithely accept one or another individual's nonsense about what should sound best for you... judge for yourselves.

There is music, created by an artist, then there's you. Discretion is required for anyone you let get between you and that music. Ask yourself; are they an artist? Are they an engineer? Are they a sound technician? Or are they some random person who writes (or merely copy/pastes) code and puts it on the internet and tries to convince you that your hearing is flawed if you don't agree with their perception?

igorzwx · 2025-11-06 02:07:23

If pulseaudio is removed, the PulseAudio ALSA plugin sits at the ALSA library level, intercepting all audio calls system-wide. This means every application that tries to use ALSA will encounter the broken plugin trying to route audio through the non-existent PulseAudio server. The leftover plugin blocks exclusive mode access and causes audio failures, making it impossible to achieve the low-latency, direct hardware access that removing PulseAudio was meant to enable.

This does affect sound quality, but semi-deaf artists might be perfectly happy with such a "fine ALSA".

bai4Iej2need · 2025-11-06 09:08:29

from https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=59154#p59154

@greenjeans : Thank You for the advice. I will test that in a VM before next steps.

Last edited by bai4Iej2need (2025-11-06 09:08:41)

greenjeans · 2025-11-06 16:44:16

If pulseaudio is removed, the PulseAudio ALSA plugin sits at the ALSA library level, intercepting all audio calls system-wide. This means every application that tries to use ALSA will encounter the broken plugin trying to route audio through the non-existent PulseAudio server.

No it doesn't, that's a myth. Alsa doesn't do squat unless you tell it to, so unless you've explicitly called pulse in a conf file, that plugin won't do anything. There's several plugins in that package like Jack in addition to Pulse, are you claiming that all of them are "intercepting" or is it just pulse that has you paranoid?

Your whole gig is basically a solution looking for a problem.

My Alsa is arguably "purer" than yours simply because there has been no mucking about with re-compiling plugins to remove functionality and sample-rate hacking. And it's going to stay that way.

igorzwx · 2025-11-06 20:23:49

If believe that the PulseAudio ALSA plugin is harmless, you may also try believe that you have a "bit perfect" playback, unless you've explicitly enabled resampling in a conf file.

greenjeans · 2025-11-06 20:42:03

I wouldn't call anything to do with Pulse harmless, I dislike it as much as you do, but in this case it's not doing anything Igor. Nothing wrong with going to the lengths you have gone to, but it's based on a false premise, and so in effect you're posting a false alarm with incorrect data.

I'm not trying for bit-perfect anything here, i'll leave stuff like that to the audio forums and people with novel-length .asoundrc's.

If it bugs a person that much, you can probably get rid of it a lot easier by just deleting the 2 pulse .so files in the alsa-lib folder, lol.

In any case, the only reason I posted in your thread the last couple days is because another user tagged me and asked a question, so I answered it and now i'll leave you to it and not bother you anymore today.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-11-06 20:51:38)

ralph.ronnquist · 2025-11-06 22:12:03

Nowadays we also have the pipewire-alsa package that does the same as pulseaudio-alsa but directing to pipewire instead.

kapqa · 2025-11-06 22:50:20

@ralph.ronnquist if zou try this command on devuan 6 to remove pulse-pipewire as suggested

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=49837#p49837

you will get "encouraged" to remove it , otherwise the command wont function; that was my experience today if not mistaken.

Danielsan · Yesterday 18:31:24

Once I remember to use a basic settings to have a fully functional audio:

pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer  {
     type dmix
     ipc_key 1024
     slave {
        pcm "hw:1,0"
        period_time 0
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 4096
        rate 44100
    }
    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
    }
}

ctl.dmixer {
    type hw
    card 1
}

Last edited by Danielsan (Yesterday 18:31:47)

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#26 2025-11-05 17:06:33

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#27 2025-11-05 17:25:46

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#28 2025-11-05 17:41:00

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#29 2025-11-06 01:28:41

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#30 2025-11-06 02:07:23

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#31 2025-11-06 09:08:29

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#32 2025-11-06 16:44:16

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#33 2025-11-06 20:23:49

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#34 2025-11-06 20:42:03

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#35 2025-11-06 22:12:03

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#36 2025-11-06 22:50:20

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

#37 Yesterday 18:31:24

Re: ALSA without PulseAudio and PipeWire

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