[gentoo-user] Gentoo + KDE + pulseaudio + ? == happiness

[Dmitry S. Makovey]

Hi everybody,

not trying to stir up a flamewar about pulseaudio viability etc. I want
to make my setup work *with* the pulseaudio, but I feel like I'm missing
something. So I'd rather avoid comments "don't use it then" if at all
possible.

What I have:
Gentoo + KDE-4.4.5 + pulseaudio-0.9.21.1

How I use it:
In KDE I've got Xine backend setup for playback (if I use gstreamer I
get higher frequency of problems popping up, see below).

Problems I see:
Whenever any app tries to use KDE sound notification system I have a
good chance of sound becoming garbled in Amarok (while listening to the
music), heck even non-KDE apps like Skype would work fine until
something else decides to use sound device (like gnash/lighspark, etc.).
Chances of getting garbled sound are 50/50 - it's never a guarantee:
sometimes it works - sometimes it "crashes". To get sound back I have to
restart app (Skype, Firefox, Amarok, etc.).

How I configured it:
$ cat /etc/asound.conf
# as per http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup#ALSAApplications
# we're using pulseaudio for everything now...
#
pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}
 
ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}

$ cat ~/.asoundrc
pcm.hda-intel {
   type hw
   card 0
}

ctl.hda-intel {
   type hw
   card 0
}

I've been living with above problems for a while now not having much
time to investigate and writing it off as immaturity of stack, but it
was out for quite a while and obviously people use it with better rate
of success (judging by online resources).

My HW looks like this:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                      HDA NVidia at 0xfe020000 irq 20
 2 [U0x46d0x809    ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x809
                      USB Device 0x46d:0x809 at usb-0000:00:02.1-2, high
speed

(second device is a Logitec's USB WebCam).

I realize it may be a question more geared toward pulseaudio community
but I'd rather find out whether there's something Gentoo-specific I'm
missing first.