[onli]

Pulseaudio still has problems. Sound suddenly being muted, it using the wrong alsamixer settings, sound being garbled until you pass in arcance settings or change it back to Alsa. Granted, the error might be more in part of the rest of the ecosystem, though I doubt it. But it is sadly far from "just use pulseaudio and everything will work instantly". And if it works, there is no need to think that Alsa alone wouldn't have worked as well, the configuration was way less brittle and cumbersome than it is described now. Mostly it just worked.

It is only since 14.04 that you have a small chance that opting to use pulseaudio is the better choice.

Just trying to get Skype working (which uses pulseaudio) cost me 2 hours last week, which is not at all nice when you have a call starting in 5 minutes.

[angersock]

Seconding this.

Pulseaudio still won't detect the headphone jack on my old intel board, and Skype on my newer machines on Linux will routinely fuckup playback.

One also wonders how much of the PA cleanup was handled by people that weren't Lennart.

[diltonm]

Strange I don't see the issues you're talking about I use Ubuntu Desktop on a variety of desktops and laptops. I'd say PA was stable by Ubuntu 12.04. I do Skype and Google Talkplugin (now Hangouts).

[GrinningFool]

Working in your use case doesn't invalidate someone else's. I've had some systems that pulseaudio has been great for. I have some in which I still don't have fully working sound.

[fit2rule]

Try using it with JACK and setting up a DAW.. then you'll see the pain.

[tripzilch]

I've had success by adding these four pre/post startup/stop scripts to qJackCtl: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Examples#The...

In particular for problems of getting Youtube (or any browser audio) to work while other apps use JACK directly.

Although on a recent new install it seemed to work without them as well.

One problem is I need to start/stop the qJackCtl thing every time my laptop comes back from sleep, to get sound working again. There must be a way to automate (or, preferably, fix) this, right? Anyone know?

[fit2rule]

To be fair, the only reason to run Pulseaudio is "everyone else is" - i.e. its fully glommed into the distro. ALSA and Jack have been stable for a lot of people, even before Lennart decided to tackle 'all the problems'.

But, also to be fair - like you, I maintain my own systems and do not overly depend on the teeming-mass-reality as a derivation of stability. My personal Linux DAW systems, running now for decades, have attained a level of productivity that I would at least hope is represented in the current niveau, vis a vis Popular Linux Distro designed for audio (e.g. pure:dyne, Arch Pro Audio, 64 Studio, UbuntuStudio, et al.) .. for the newcomer, it should of course 'all just work' from boot-up, which I hope is the case. It is for me, anyway: I've expunged pulseaudio from all of my machines, and make do with Jack. My studio uses 48-channels of digital audio, everything-is-a-file .. a working and functional DAW, thousands of plugins, about 12 MIDI devices (synthesizers/effects rack) and so on, and the best thing of all: all source code included. So, yeah .. ;)

EDIT: apropos qjackctl, yeah, apmd:

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix_commands/apmd.htm

.. or some such similar thing.

[tripzilch]

Thank you! I keep meaning to figure out that power-management thing, but keep putting it off because I vaguely don't know where to start. Now I have something, I will dig into it :-D

[pdkl95]

Might be worth trying ALSA->JACK routing?

http://pastebin.com/iVAjZzTS

[baldfat]

Thanks you just ruined my Friday remembering those days!!!!