UPDATE ON THIS SUBJECT:
Completely remove PulseAudio & replace it with ALSA (Mint 13 Cinnamon, and XFCE):
A. Before proceeding, please use Update Manager to install the latest updates (click mintUpdate tray icon to open Update Manager > Refresh > Install Updates)
B. Menu > Preferences > Startup Applications > uncheck "PulseAudio Sound System" and "PulseAudio Sound System KDE Routing Policy"
C. Remove pulseaudio, related packages and configuration files:
Code: Select all
killall pulseaudio
sudo killall pulseaudio
sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio libpulse-browse0 paman pavumeter pavucontrol
sudo mv /etc/asound.conf /etc/asound.conf-bak
rm ~/.pulse-cookie
rm -r ~/.pulse
D. Restart your computer
F. For Cinnamon only: To enable Volume Control, I found out 3 mixer choices: gnome-alsamixer, qasmixer and xfce4-mixer. Qasmixer seems a little bit complicated. Gnome-alsamixer and xfce4-mixer are ok. I choosed xfce4-mixer.
G. Configure gstreamer to use ALSA for default output and input
H. I also had to configure Skype to use my webcam mic, which was a pain in the ass, since without pulseaudio, you now have like 10+ unclear options to choose from. Try them all!!! But in the end, it works now.
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I've done this procedure on 2 computers:
Mint 13 XFCE 32 bit: It's easier on XFCE, because xcfe4-mixer is already installed, and you still can have it in the system tray.
Mint 13 Cinnamon 64 bit: it works, but I don't have the system tray icon now.
Does anybody know how to get it back?
Reasons I wanted to uninstall pulseaudio: my desktop computer has ac powered speakers. My other computer is more like a htpc. When I listened to music with pulseaudio, the sound was always distorted, kinda overamplified, which was quite annoying. Plus my webcam mic didnt work. Back in the days that I used Windows, the sound was good. But now that I'm running Linux only, i had to find a way. It was a little harder than what the first post suggested, but in the end it works!
If anybody has some more tips on the subject, tell us!