How to remove PulseAudio and fix sound with ALSA and ESound

[igorzwx]

!!! WARNING: DO NOT USE THIS TUTORIAL ON Mint 8 and Ubuntu 9.10 !!!

How to remove PulseAudio and fix sound with ALSA and ESound

TESTED APPS (work out of the box):

Adobe Flash (Youtube)
VLC
MPlayer
Rhythmbox
RealPlayer
Totem
Audacity (playback and recording)
Skype


Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) vs. Open Sound System version 4

OSS4 is for audiophiles and for Linux hackers.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... sorry.html

When OSS4 is already installed, it is easy to use, and it is supperb. Excellent sound quality.
You can play all your audio apps simultaneously and mix sound in the virtual mixer (vmix).

If your soundcard is not supported by OSS4, you are out of luck.
The hardware lists are here:
http://mercurial.opensound.com/?file/6b ... ists/Linux
http://www.opensound.com/osshw.html
QOUTE: "This list is not 100% complete. There are dozens of sound cards that are based
on some standard sound chips (or motherboard chipset) made by vendors like
Intel, VIA, Cirrus/Crystal, Analog Devices, Realtek, Yamaha, C'Media,
Trident, Sigmatel and many others. Such cards may not be listed in the
following list but they are still supported. Just look at the list of
"Generic ..." devices below."

ALSA is "advanced". In Linux speak, it may mean "ill-designed" and/or "difficult to use".
Whether you like ALSA or not, it is certainly better than nothing at all.
For Linux, there are ALSA drivers and OSS4 drivers, and nothing more (as far as I know).


The Standard Sound Solution: ALSA with ESound

This solution was implemented in Ubuntu 7.10 and it worked well.
It was not perfect, of course. But what is perfect in our day?

*****************************************************************************
1. Install Linux Mint7 (Main Edition, 32 bits with codecs and Adobe Flash)
2. Install some applications and codecs you need
3. Purge PulseAudio
4. Install ESound
*****************************************************************************

NOTE: Adobe Flash might be problematic with 64 bits.
For OSS4, an excellent hack was designed by Temüjin.
Now the hack is applied automatically when you install OSS4.
But you should have, perhaps, Adobe Flash installed before you install OSS4.
During installation of OSS4, all the pulse things will be replaced by OSS4 hacks.
When you purge OSS4, it may reverse the changes (or may not).
I have not tried 64 bits with Ubuntus yet.


**********************
Step-by-Step Howto
**********************

Step 1: Install Linux Mint 7 Main Edition

Step 2: Update the system

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo reboot

Step 3: Install Opera web browser
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OperaBrowser


gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this line at the bootom:

deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free


Then do this:

sudo apt-get update

wget -O - http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-get install debian-archive-keyring

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install opera


You will see Opera Web Browser in Menu after a reboot.
Now:
Press Alt+F2, type: opera
Press ENTER
It should start now.


Step 4: Install codecs and other stuff:

sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libxine1-all-plugins

sudo apt-get install vlc mencoder lame

sudo apt-get install acroread acroread-fonts

sudo apt-get install realplayer

sudo apt-get install skype-static-oss

sudo apt-get install googleearth


Step 5: Install Audacity 1.3.8

Download Audacity 1.3.8 from getdeb
http://www.getdeb.net/search.php?keywords=audacity

Download: audacity (2.6 MB) , audacity-data (2.0 MB)

Save these two deb packages to a folder.
Open Terminal in that folder and install Audacity with these commands:

sudo apt-get install libflac++6 libwxbase2.8-0 libwxgtk2.8-0

sudo dpkg -i audacity*i386.deb audacity-data*all.deb

sudo apt-get install swh-plugins sox libsox-fmt-all libsox1


Download and install Audacity Manual

it is here:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... =Main_Page
http://manual.audacityteam.org/help.zip

Unzip help.zip

This will produce a folder "manual"
which you should copy to the folder /usr/share/audacity/help

sudo mkdir /usr/share/audacity/help

gksu nautilus

This will run Nautiulus with root privileges (it is red like tomato).
File System -> home -> igor -> Desktop ["igor" is my user name]
Copy everything you need and close the Red Nautilus.
Be careful!!! Do not make mistakes.

The result should be: /usr/share/audacity/help/manual


******************************************************
Removal of PulseAudio and Installation of ESound
******************************************************

sudo killall pulseaudio

cp /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio ~/

sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio

sudo apt-get install -y esound esound-clients esound-common libesd-alsa0

sudo reboot

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT:

AFTER REBOOT:

If you have High Definition Audio (HDA), you may need to unmute you speakers (and the like) after reboot.
You can do this with Gnome Volume Control (-> Preferences).

This was reported for nVidia Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=33894
QUOTE: "The tutorial for purging pulseaudio and installing Esound ( Alsa?) has worked.
The one thing to note just in case one lapses inton despair is when its all changed, its muted and turned down to zero! You need to notice that!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


******************************
Now let us test how it works.
******************************

1. Adobe Flash with Firefox - works out of the box

Run Firefox -> Youtube -> Audacity Tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5K1ZsoO1sU

RESULT: Adobe Flash works out of the box (video + sound)

Notice that we have not made any changes in the sound settings yet.
Let us look what is there.

System -> Preferences -> Sound
Defauts:
Sound playback: Autodetect
Sound playback: Autodetect
Sound playback: Autodetect
Sound capture: ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
Default Mixer Tracks:
Device: Realtek ALC200,200P rev 0 (OSS Mixer)

2. VLC - works out of the box

You can run several VLC and play several different audio files simultaneously.
This is exactly how it was in Ubuntu 6.10 and even better, because youtube is now opened (and no problem!)
Let us look what is in the settings:
VLC -> Tools -> Preferences (Show settings = All) -> Audio -> Output modules
Default:
Audio output module: Default
Alsa Device Name: Default
OSS DSP Device: /dev/dsp

It works. Do not fix it.

3. MPlayer, Rhythmbox, RealPlayer, Totem - work out of the box

4. Audacity - works out of the box (playback and recording)

If you do not know how to record with Audacity, start a new thread.
Do not highjack this thread.

5. Skype - works out of the box

Default settings:
Sound devices (all): /dev/dsp


******************************************************************************************
TEST was performed on the ancient box (of 2001): Pentium 4, 1.6GHz, 500MB RAM
******************************************************************************************

REFERENCES:
http://shibuvarkala.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... alope.html
http://packages.medibuntu.org/jaunty/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Sound_System
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... sorry.html

[lagagnon]

I have no idea why anyone would need to install Opera, GoogleEarth, Skype, Acroread and RealPlayer (amongst other unnecessary stuff I see in this HOWTO) in order to remove PulseAudio???

Please explain because I believe this HOWTO needs some serious editing to be viable for newbies.

[igorzwx]

QUOTE:
"I have no idea why anyone would need to install Opera, GoogleEarth, Skype, Acroread and RealPlayer (amongst other unnecessary stuff I see in this HOWTO) in order to remove PulseAudio???"

ANSWER:
If you do not need Opera, GoogleEarth, Skype, Acroread and RealPlayer, do not install them.
If you do not need Audacity, do not install it too.
But codecs are important, and flash too, if you are going to play something.

I installed all the apps to test them.

Install another Mint in dual boot on the same box and try to reproduce my experiment.

Good luck!

[igorzwx]

After the removal of PulseAudio you may want to remove the useless
"PulseAudio Device Chooser", "PulseAudio Volume Control", and the like.
They can be removed in this way:

$ sudo apt-get remove paman padevchooser pavumeter pavucontrol
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
mint-meta-gnome mint-meta-main padevchooser paman pavucontrol pavumeter


Both mint-meta-gnome and mint-meta-main seem to be meta packages, as the names suggest.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MetaPackages

Meta packages can be safely removed.
It is rumoured that this may cause troubles during a system upgrade
(from Ubuntu 9.04 to Ubuntu 9.10, for example).
In any case, a sensible person would never upgrade any sort of Ubuntu,
he would rather make a new installation.

I removed these useless things and rebooted the system.
They vanished from menus and no troubles occurred.

[igorzwx]

A warning form coldReactive:
"Just remember that pulseaudio is more integrated in Ubuntu 9.10, it may not be as easily replaced."

It might be interesting to try, of course.

coldReactive's Domain
http://coldreactive.tumblr.com/post/154 ... all-esound

EDIT:
coldReactive's HOW TO: Remove PulseAudio and Install ESound (ALSA)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1229804

[emorrp1]

all "more integrated" means is it's being used more and more by all Linux projects, I suspect that any how to that works on Jaunty will work for Karmic. Summary of next paragraph: for a how to, do not assume readers will know as much as you, otherwise they wouldn't be using the how to.

I also agree with lagagnon, if you intend this to be a how to remove pulseaudio, please remove steps 3+5 (perhaps put them in a separate "testing" section) and remove the unnecessary software from step 4. When you're writing a how to, the whole point is you have more knowledge than the readers, so don't expect them to be able to tell which apt-get lines they should use and which ones they shouldn't. If anything you're just increasing the likelyhood of failure, and hence people will say "OSS is too hard". Additionally, in step 2, please don't advise an "apt-get upgrade" in the Mint forums without good reason (and certainly not without advance warning), as it bypasses the safety levels established my mintUpdate (for those that use it) and therefore does not respect the user's preferences.

EDIT: the link you posted to ColdReactive is a good example of the above, it's straightforward and easy to follow, without getting sidetracked with installing other apps.

[igorzwx]

Hi emorrp1 !

Many thanks for comments and friendly advice.
I will try, of course, to do something about this.
But it is not as easy as it may look like.

This howto suggests a fresh clean install of Mint 7 (Main Edition, 32 bits).
In this case, the applications - Skype, Audacity, Adobe Flash, etc. - should work "out of the box" with default settings.
Otherwise, it might be a mess, and troubleshooting might be problematic.

If there is still no sound, the user should type this command on Terminal:

aplay -l

If he gets this result:

$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:217: no soundcards found...

it may mean that he has not a proper ALSA driver for his soundcard.
In this case, he my try to upgrade ALSA and/or fix it in some way.

ALSA Upgrade Script
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810

HdaIntelSoundHowto - Community Ubuntu Documentation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

EDIT:
Sound Troubleshooting - Community Ubuntu Documentation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Sound

[emorrp1]

maybe just a simple [optional] marker near the respective bits would be enough.

[igorzwx]

QUOTE: "maybe just a simple [optional] marker near the respective bits would be enough."

It is as simple as it is genial !!!

EDIT: I just installed some additional esd-things, plugin for vlc and the like.
I am going to test them now. Then, perhaps, a new version of this howto.

[emorrp1]

excellent, I look forward to trying it out (in a VM at least ), if you write it again from scratch, you might want to put it in viewforum.php?f=42 to make it easier to find.

[igorzwx]

QUOTE: "excellent, I look forward to trying it out (in a VM at least ),"

Hi emorrp1 !

I am very intrigued to hear about the result of your experiment.

Very interesting discussion here:
Re: HOW TO: Remove PulseAudio and Install ESound (ALSA)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1229804&page=3

Temüjin: "Removing pulseaudio is okay for now, but GNOME is becoming increasingly dependent on Pulseaudio. In Ubuntu 9.10, it's a real challenge to go without PulseAudio (I run an Ubuntu 9.10 with OSS4 and the volume control and sound settings dialogs don't run without it.)"
__________________
The State of Sound in Linux
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... sorry.html

[igorzwx]

The Ubuntu team announced the beta release of Ubuntu 9.10
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/beta

If to believe Temüjin, it might be difficult to remove PulseAudio from Ubuntu 9.10
One may try...

[igorzwx]

Just received a message from Free Software Foundation (FSF)

INFO: Miguel de Icaza, the creator of Gnome Desktop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza

Perhaps, it was Miguel de Icaza who made PulseAudio irremovable from the new version of Gnome (Ubuntu 9.10 and Mint 8 )

**************************************************************************************************************************
This is that message from FSF:

date Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 3:26 PM
subject [FSF] Microsoft's Codeplex Foundation
mailing list info-fsf.gnu.org Filter messages from this mailing list
mailed-by gnu.org


Microsoft recently announced the creation of the Codeplex Foundation.
What does it mean for free software? FSF president Richard Stallman
responds.

Original article at
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/microsoft- ... foundation


Lest CodePlex Perplex

by Richard M. Stallman
President

Many in our community are suspicious of the CodePlex Foundation. With
its board of directors dominated by Microsoft employees and
ex-employees, plus apologist Miguel de Icaza, there is plenty of reason
to be wary of the organization. But that doesn't prove its actions will
be bad.

Someday we will be able to judge the organization by its actions
(including its public relations). Today we can only try to anticipate
what it will do, based on its statements and Microsoft's statements.

The first thing we see is that the organization ducks the issue of
users' freedom; it uses the term "open source" and does not speak of
"free software". These two terms stand for different philosophies which
are based on different values: free software's values are freedom and
social solidarity, whereas open source cites only practical convenience
values such as powerful, reliable software. See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-sour ... point.html for more
explanation.

Evidently Microsoft would rather confront the practical competition of
open source than the free software movement's ethical criticism. Its
long standing practice of criticizing only "open source" does double
duty: attacking one opponent while distracting attention from the other.

CodePlex follows the same practice. Its stated goal is to convince
"commercial software companies" to contribute more to "open source".
Since nearly all open source programs are also free software, these
programs will probably be free, but the "open source" philosophy doesn't
teach developers to defend their freedom. If they don't understand the
importance of this freedom, developers may succumb to Microsoft's ploys
encouraging them to use weaker licenses that are vulnerable to "embrace
and extend" or patent co-optation, and to make free software dependent
on proprietary platforms.

This foundation is not the first Microsoft project to bear the name
"CodePlex". There is also codeplex.com, a project hosting site, whose
list of allowed licenses excludes GNU GPL version 3. Perhaps this
reflects the fact that GPL version 3 is designed to protect a program's
free software status from being subverted by Microsoft's patents through
deals like the Novell-Microsoft pact. We don't know that the CodePlex
Foundation will try to discourage GPL version 3, but it would fit
Microsoft's pattern.

The term "commercial software companies" embodies a peculiar confusion.
Every business is by definition commercial, so all software developed by
a business--whether free or proprietary--is automatically commercial
software. But there is a widespread public confusion between "commercial
software" and "proprietary software". (See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.)

This confusion is a serious problem because it falsely claims free
software business to be impossible. Many software companies already
contribute to free software, and these commercial contributions are
quite useful. Perhaps Microsoft would like people to assume these facts
are impossible.

Based on these facts, we can see that CodePlex will encourage developers
not to think about freedom. It will subtly spread the idea that free
software business is impossible without the support of a proprietary
software company like Microsoft. However, it may convince some
proprietary software companies to release additional free software. Will
that be a contribution to computer users' freedom?

It will be, if the software thus contributed works well on free
platforms, in free environments. But that is just the opposite of what
Microsoft has said it seeks to achieve.

Sam Ramji, now president of CodePlex, said a few months ago that
Microsoft (then his employer) wanted to promote development of free
applications that encourage use of Microsoft Windows
(http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/ar ... hp/3811941). Perhaps the
aim of CodePlex is to suborn free software application developers into
making Windows their main platform. Many of the projects hosted now on
codeplex.com are add-ons for proprietary software. These programs are
caught in a trap similar to the former Java Trap (see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html).

That would be harmful if it succeeds, because a program that doesn't run
(or doesn't run well) in the Free World does not contribute to our
freedom. A non-free program takes away its users' freedom. To avoid
being harmed in that way, we need to reject proprietary system platforms
as well as proprietary applications. CodePlex free add-ons to a
proprietary base increase society's dependence on that base -- the
opposite of what we need.

Will free software application developers resist this attempt to
undermine our progress towards freedom? Here is where their values
become crucial. Developers that adhere to the "open source" philosophy,
which does not value freedom, may not care whether their software's
users run it on a free operating system or a proprietary one. But
developers who demand freedom, for themselves and for others, can
recognize the trap and keep out of it. To remain free, we must make
freedom our goal.

If the CodePlex Foundation wishes to be a real contributor to the free
software community, it must not aim at free add-ons to non-free
packages. It needs to encourage development of portable software capable
of running on free platforms based on GNU/Linux and other free operating
systems. If it tries to seduce us into going in the opposite direction,
we must make sure to refuse.

However good or bad the CodePlex Foundation's actions, we must not
accept them as an excuse for Microsoft's acts of aggression against our
community. From its recent attempt to sell patents to proxy trolls who
could then do dirty work against GNU/Linux to its longstanding promotion
of Digital Restrictions Management, Microsoft continues to act to harm
us. We would be fools indeed to let anything distract us from that.



Copyright 2009 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and distribution of
this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any
medium provided this notice is preserved.

end.


info-fsf mailing list
info-fsf@gnu.org

[wolfear]

I have no idea why anyone would need to install Opera, GoogleEarth, Skype, Acroread and RealPlayer (amongst other unnecessary stuff I see in this HOWTO) in order to remove PulseAudio???

Please explain because I believe this HOWTO needs some serious editing to be viable for newbies.

Totally agree. Luckily I do at least know enough to realize this. I pity the next Linux newbie trying to work out a sound issue.
And confused is up with the MS thing?...just when I thought the added programs were pointless.

The bits and bobs I was able to sort out were helpful, I will give credit where credit due.

But next time I need to replace a washer in a faucet, should I also have to get a new TV, Road Atlas, and telephone, while reading Martha Stewart's latest article?

[igorzwx]

Dear Wolfear!

If you could write a better "howto", we all would be very grateful.
This "howto" is "open source", anyone can re-write, re-use, and re-publish it how he wants.

[igorzwx]

The advanced users do try to remove PulseAudio from Ubuntu 9.10
This is a report:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~jmulesa/?p=72
Not Looking Forward to Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10)

by John-Michael on Oct.07, 2009, under linux

Now, I’ve been using Ubuntu on and off since the first release, 4.10. What I’ve noticed is that the quality of releases are not consistent. Ironically, what was supposed to be one of the most stable releases (6.06) ended up being one of the most buggy, even after the extra two months they had, which is why 6.06.1 hit so quickly. Some other releases have been excellent, such as 8.04 and 9.04. Since I usually can’t sit still on a linux distro, I upgrade to the next version as soon as it hits beta. Since karmic just went beta, I decided to upgrade. Usually the betas are stable enough for my tastes, but this is not the case for karmic. The upgrade completely hosed my jaunty install with some very strange blinking console issues. I then tried a fresh netboot install, which also managed to fail. Finally I used the beta desktop disc to clean install and while it is now running, it is still very rough. My biggest complaint is the complete integration of pulseaudio into gnome. I tried using it at first, but the volume control was extremely buggy, so I decided to remove it. No longer can you remove pulseaudio and use alsa for playback, everything had been changed in gnome to work ONLY with pulseaudio. I had an excellently working sound system in ubuntu for many release and they now have royally messed that up. This along with erratic app behavior and an inconsistent theme is showing that karmic is shaping up to be a less-than-stellar release :/

[keithp]

Igorzwx

You say that, after replacing pulseaudio, your Skype works 'out of the box'

What webcam and, more importantly, mic, are you using, please?

I have a Logitech Quickcam Chat with its 'plug into the sound card' mic and headphone. It all works very well in WindowsXP, but is a failure in Linux.

The video is reasonable, but not as good as in XP - however it is acceptable. Playback sound is OK, but the mic is dead.

During the past few weeks I have tried to get the mic working in 4 different distros. No success with any of them. I have now worked through your tutorial and replaced pulse audio. The mic is still not working. I have tried with Skype, aMSN and Audacity in all 4 distros.

I need both Skype and aMSN, and as soon as I can get them working in Linux, I can wipe XP.

I'm wondering if a USB headset would cure the problem, as I think that it wouldn't use the distro's sound system. So it would work with the next Gnome with its built in pulse audio. Am I correct?

Any advice will be very greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

Keith

[igorzwx]

Hi Keithp!

Skype with Ubuntu/Mint is my hobby.
And I am really happy to hear you questions.

I will try to answer them all, but you may better start a new thread for Skype on this forum.

I tested an old webcam, Logitech QuickCam Connect, with Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 9.04,
Skype and Ekiga,
on IBM ThinkPad R40 and on Dell notebook Latitude 820 (dual core, Intel HDA).
This webcam seems to work well.

To be fair, I usually do not use webcams. My Internet connection is not very fast, and my friends, as a rule,
do not use webcams for the same reason.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I do not use USB audio devices for Skype with Linux, and I do not recommend to use USB audio devices for Skype.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We may discuss this in detail later.

To enjoy Skype with Linux, you need a cheap table mic (10 EURO or so) and a simple webcam (Logitech, perhaps).
I am using a very cheap Logitech table mic, and other cheap mics; there are not USB things, just the simplest ones.

QUOTE: "You say that, after replacing pulseaudio, your Skype works 'out of the box'"

Yes. I made experiments with old computers (no HDA), and it did work "out of the box".
However, as it was reported by one user, it may not be always true for High Definition Audio (HDA) soundcards.
In this case, you may need to unmute you audio input and output with Gnome Volume Control, or a similar tool.
This is really easy to do, no problems.

QUOTE: "During the past few weeks I have tried to get the mic working in 4 different distros."

I can believe this. But this does not mean that it is impossible to make it work with Linux.

I have Skype installed on:

1. IBM ThinkPad R40, Ubuntu 9.04 with OSS4 (PulseAudio was removed)

2. My old box (of 2001), Ubuntu 9.04 with OSS4 (PulseAudio was removed)

3. My old box (of 2001), Mint 7, ALSA + ESound (PulseAudio was removed)

The best performance is with OSS4. No noise, no delay. Fantastic quality.
ALSA also works well, and it is perfectly usable.

From my subjective experience, the same old soundcard works much better with OSS4 and Linux,
than with Windows XP.

QUOTE: "So it would work with the next Gnome with its built in pulse audio. Am I correct? "

I would be very sceptical about Skype with Ubuntu 9.10 and Mint 8.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a reason for the removal of PulseAudio

Bug #362203 in pulseaudio (Ubuntu): “Skype high CPU use on 9.04 ...
Yes, using pulseaudio with skype in 9.04 gives a leak of memory, but fortunately it is possible to avoid using pulseaudio with skype. ...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/362203

Bug #362203:
Skype high CPU use on 9.04 using pulse (and audio recording/sending delay >5sec)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope that all your questions are now answered.
If something remains unclear, any further questions are welcome, of course.

Best regards,
Igor

Edit:
This is a blog of Ubuntu Skype users:
http://www.ubuntumini.com/2009/09/fix-m ... emove.html
You may find some howtos there too.

[Unexpected Tiger]

Hi. I followed these instructions on Mint 7 in the hope of resolving several sound problems, but I've lost sound for Flash in Firefox-3.5. I've followed these instructions:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=204022

and I've installed libalsaplayer and mpeg123-esd, to no avail. For my flash related packages I have adobe-flashplugin, flashplugin-installer and flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound. I saw somewhere the problem might be gstreamer so (deep breath) the gstreamer packages I have installed are

gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
gstreamer0.10-pitfdll
gstreamer0.10-schroedinger
gstreamer0.10-tools
gstreamer0.10-esd
gstreamer0.10-alsa
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base
gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
gstreamer0.10-x
gstreamer0.10-base-apps
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
bluez-gstreamer
libgstreamer0.10-0
libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0

My sound card is an HDA-Intel ICH6, and I'm using C-Span USB speakers.

[galen]

Is there a way to remove the awful pulseaudio yet?
I have 3 machines Ubuntu/Mint based with horrible audio thanks to pulseaudio.
ALSA was great