Re: [gentoo-user] USB sound

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday, 28 April 2020 19:29:18 BST Mark Knecht wrote:

> Ah, so now we have more clues about what's going on. KDE supplies
> pulseaudio.

Not here, it doesn't, as far as I can see. It may emulate it, I suppose.

> AFAIK it's part of the KDE installation on other distros. I'm
> running Kubuntu LTS, not Gentoo, so I have pulseaudio because it's what the
> Kubuntu guys give me. You have a USE flag that __YOU__ took responsibility
> for turning off. (I'm not clear from this discussion what packages have a
> pulseaudio flag - multiple packages I assume?

I haven't switched any USE flags off. This is the standard plasma profile, apart 
from 18 package.use files that have nothing to do with sound.

> </SNARK> I have no idea whether rebuilding 19 packages and installing 10
> new ones is a big deal for your system, nor can I say what the impact of
> those changes would be to the way your system operates, but you're a Gentoo
> guys so you must (!! ;) !!)) love building packages and experiments, right?
> ;-) (It's why I gave up using Gentoo for my desktop computers. I don't like
> experiments so much anymore!)

No, of course that many package changes aren't a big deal; I mentioned it to 
show what a big change would be involved to a previously working system.

> > > Use KDE systemsettings, search for sound, choose 'Multimedia', Under
> > > 'Audio Volume' what do you see? What device is set as default? (This
> > > part of systemsettings is very similar to pavucontrol but it doesn't
> > > give you the VU meters which are nicely visible to see what apps are
> > > generating audio.
>
> > KDE system settings have changed since your day, Mark; there's now no
> > reference to the hardware at all under Multimedia; only CDDB.
>
> Or your choice to disable USE flags has removed some of the 'features' of
> KDE.

Not so, as I said above.

> Again, I'm using completely updated stable Kubuntu LTS for my
> day-to-day systems so there are clearly differences. However I suggest here
> that the reason there is no multimedia under audio in system settings may
> be because you haven't included the pulseaudio USE flag.

I haven't _added_ a pulseaudio USE flag because I haven't needed it. I haven't 
removed one either.

> And I do understand that pulseaudio is sort of like Joan Jett singing Bad
> Reputation. Joan, pulseaudio and by extension Mr. Pottering pretty much
> 'just don't care about my bad reputation'.

Sorry, those allusions are lost on me.

--->8

> > Thanks for your help.
>
> Not sure I've helped so far. Sorry!

Yes, you've given me several ideas, for which much thanks.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.