Re: [gentoo-user] ALSA wizard...

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 1:50 PM Jorge Almeida <jjalmeida@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 9:23 PM Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 1:06 PM Jorge Almeida <jjalmeida@×××××.com>
wrote:
> > >
>
> > Some reading I did about people having problems similar to yours with
discord and zoom suggested that some of these aps are compiled to __only__
support pulseaudio and then they supply it if it's not already on the
system. Even though you don't build it using a specific portage entry in
your world file doesn't mean it's not on your system if it was buried in
the zoom/discord code.
>
> Hummm... But then discord would not complain about not being able to
> initialize audio?

You're probably right unless it looks for pulseaudio, cannot find it, and
tried to do Alsa and then fails. I might make assumptions about Alsa that
aren't correct or possibly there's something about this specific
Behringer device that doesn't support something required in application
initialization. Who knows? (Certainly not you and I!) ;-)

> >
> > 1) Run 'pulseaudio' at the command line to check
> There is no such thing (if it were hidden in some app it would not be
> in the PATH, anyway)
> And I regularly check what's cooking, with "ps axf".

Sounds correct unless it was the discord application path. But I suspect
you're correct.

>
>
> > Any 'real' pulseaudio build can be configured to not 'autospawn' via
it's config files. That way people who don't want it, or think they don't,
can have it on the system but run it only when they need it and shut it
down when they don't. I did that for awhile. That sort of setup might be
more acceptable for your needs and would allow you to build it and manage
it yourself. I don't know. Something to consider. On Gentoo I wouldn't be
fearful of building it and trying it out. Not sure what flags you'd want to
enable or whether you'll end up in some sort of dependency hell as can
happen with this sort of stuff on Gentoo.
>
> Yes, stuff to learn, if possible. (But dependency hell is a definite
> possibility, not because Gentoo but due to the mindset that lurks
> beneath pulseaudio & friends)

I was just fiddling with pavucontrol-qt on my system. I found it easy to at
least switch application audio from one sound to another on the fly. It
mixes multiple applications to a single sound card correctly and let's me
adjust volume for each application. Not sure if it is able to store away
settings for that sort of stuff, it probably is though. I think it could be
useful if I really learned how to use it, but in my case keeping it
completely away from my high-end audio flow is super critical as it adds
latency and cannot improve audio quality coming from a high-end microphone
and preamp micing a guitar.

Anyway, not sure there's much more to add to this thread. It's pretty much
run it's course. If you find a reliable solution to this problem I hope
you'll report back. I suspect this thread will end up with a number of hits
for people searching for answers to this question. (Too bad we don't have
any!!!) ;-)

Over and out.

Cheers,
Mark