PulseAudio
PulseAudio, previously known as Polypaudio, is a sound server for POSIX and WIN32 systems. It is a drop in replacement for the ESD sound server with much better latency, mixing/re-sampling quality and overall architecture. PulseAudio / Pulse Audio is a sound manager for ALSA on Linux, ALSA being the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.
PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol) is a simple GTK+ based volume control tool (mixer) for the PulseAudio sound server. In contrast to classic mixer tools this one allows you to control both the volume of hardware devices and of each playback stream separately. It also allows you to redirect a playback stream to another output device without interrupting playback.
pavucontrol
The volume control "configure" on Ubuntu and Mint is NOT the same as PulseAudio pavucontrol. You will NOT see a Configuration tab on the standard volume control mixer. Install pavucontrol for the real deal.
sudo apt install pavucontrol
Distribution Specific
Fedora
PulseAudio became the standard audio system in Fedora 8, but at the time it is buggy and crashed from time to time for no apparent reason. Or, sometimes it works great without any problems. Maybe it's not so bad.
Debian
Want to install PulseAudio mixer on Debian?
apt-get install pavucontrol
Ubuntu
A sound server is basically a proxy for your sound applications. It allows you to do advanced operations on your sound data as it passes between your application and your hardware. Things like transferring the audio to a different machine, changing the sample format or channel count and mixing several sounds into one are easily achieved using a sound server.
Pulseaudio is already installed by default on most Ubuntu flavors, including Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu.
For Ubuntu environments that use pulseaudio, Ubuntu has its own custom sound indicator that will allow you to select the preferred device and control the volume of each application. If you would prefer to try pulseaudio's generic control GUI, install the pavucontrol package and launch it with terminal command:
pavucontrol
source: ubuntu wiki: PulseAudio
Tips and Tricks
Bridge HDMI and analog audio output
Updated: The easiest way to accomplish this on modern Ubuntu/Mint (at least 18.3 and up) is to use a utility called paprefs aka PulseAudio Preferences.
You won't find the ability to enable simultaneous output in the default Pulseaudio sound controls for any desktop environment.
Install PulseAudio Preferences
sudo apt install paprefs
Run the software paprefs aka PulseAudio Preferences
paprefs
There will only be one item there, Add virtual output device and you need to Check the box. Now refresh Pulseaudio
older information:
How to stop and start the Pulse Audio Service
With systemd PulseAudio is controlled by systemctl and if you kill PulseAudio it will be restarted automatically by systemctl. To suspend the service, stopping PulseAudio do:
systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.socket systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service
To start it again, you can use:
systemctl --user start pulseaudio.socket systemctl --user start pulseaudio.service
Is PulseAudio running?
ps ax|grep -i pulse
If yes
40871 ? S<sl 0:01 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal 40874 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/libexec/pulse/gsettings-helper
Temporarily suspend PulseAudio
pasuspender is a tool that can be used to tell a local PulseAudio sound server to temporarily suspend access to the audio devices, to allow other applications access them directly. pasuspender will suspend access to the audio devices, fork a child process, and when the child process terminates, resume access again.
Example environment without PulseAudio without stopping the service
pasuspender bash
Here is an example where a game is launched with PulseAudio suspended
pasuspender ./PULSAR_LostColony.x86_64
Troubleshoot
Test Sound Utility: Stereo Separation Test
Excerpt from Troubleshooting Linux Sound by Steve Litt troubleshooting guide"
Steve says, "The speaker-test program provides a nice, easy way to provide input for your sound system. When used with no arguments, it simply supplies white noise to both speakers."
Testing an M-Audio external USB sound board it was unclear as to whether or not stereo separation was functional or if the audio was monaural (mono) since the balance slider on audio players seemed to have zero impact. Elimination of audio application software is advised to find if ALSA and your wiring are correct. Use this command:
speaker-test -c2 -t wav
As Steve advised in his article the command will alternate between left and right speaker audio dialog in a loop allowing you to listen and determine if the sound is coming from the speakers, the correct speakers and that you have functional stereo separation. You may find it useful to ensure you do not have intended left speaker audio coming out of your right speaker. If you have more than 2 channels, put the number of channels in the -c argument.
Be advised the article is very informative and we hope it remains online as well as The Steve Litt Diagnostic Tools he provides there. Thanks Steve!
Testing audio input / microphone input from CLI
We can test the default audio input device, or the only audio input device on a simplistic configuration
arecord -vvv -f dat /dev/null
Watch while the audio input levels are displayed as a percentage.
We can specify an audio input device
arecord -vvv --device="hw:1,0" -f dat /dev/null
To figure out what audio input device is at hw: card,device use the following command
arecord -l
The output look for "Card X" and on the same line "device X" to know the card,device combination to specify.
PulseAudio does not get along well with KDE
pulseaudio-core-libs-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-module-gconf-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-utils-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.8-5.fc8 pulseaudio-esound-compat-0.9.8-5.fc8 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.15-3.fc8.1 pulseaudio-libs-0.9.8-5.fc8 akode-pulseaudio-2.0.2-4.fc8 kde-settings-pulseaudio-3.5-38.fc8 pulseaudio-libs-glib2-0.9.8-5.fc8
esdcompat: esdcompat is a compatibility script that takes the same arguments as the ESD sound daemon esd(1), but uses them to start a the PulseAudio sound server with the appropriate parameters
PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/system-config-soundcard/sound-sample.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo *** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
aplay -L amixer cat /proc/asound/version cat /etc/asound.conf lspci -v |grep -iC 10 audio lsmod |grep snd
Try this: (THIS WORKED) A viable work around to get rid of pulseaudio piece o crap
rename pulse-default.conf in /etc/alsa to somethin else. (This file makes pulseaudio the default device for sound for alsa) run /sbin/alsactl restore
cd /etc/alsa mv pulse-default.conf pulse-default.SUCKS /sbin/alsactl restore mplayer /usr/share/sounds/what_the_hell.mp3
Audio playback successful!
Some people say remove the rpm
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
and another Fedora 8 person has urged me to install
kde-settings-pulse
$ xmms *
- PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
- WARNING **: alsa_setup(): Failed to open pcm device (default):
Connection refused
$ mplayer * ....
- PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: Connection refused Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound. Audio: no sound Video: no video ....
The solution isn't as simple as starting pulseaudio, though:
$ pulseaudio W: alsa-util.c: Cannot find mixer control "Master". E: module-alsa-source.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: No such file or directory E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-source" (argument: "device=hw:0 source_name=alsa_input.pci_1002_4383_alsa_capture_0"): initialization failed.
Microphone detected but can't change volume in Mint Linux
You open pulseaudio in Linux Mint and the Microphone audio device under "Input" is displayed, however, the slider is grayed out. Can apply to Linux Mint 18.x - 20.x
Try to clear the settings in the ~/.config/pulse directory. Delete all of the directory contents (rm * but not rm -r *). Once all the files in that folder are gone execute the following command at the cli:
pulseaudio -k
Now reboot and see if you have control over the microphone slider.
- credit: This tip provided by user trytip over at linuxmint.com
Controlling Pulse Audio from CLI
restart the Pulse Audio with:
pulseaudio -k
You can check if the pulse audio is running by:
pulseaudio --check
if all is ok no output will be shown. you can start it and check for problems on start by:
- the pulseaudio --check reports nothing even when the service is stopped. this does not seem to do a damn thing.
pulseaudio --start
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