Mint 20.2 Breaks ALSA Apps

[FeralUrchin]

PulseAudio breaks ALSA apps by intercepting and disrupting the timing of audio frame delivery to the hardware. Preventing PulseAudio from running is essential to correct functioning of ALSA apps. For quite some time we were able to prevent PulseAudio from running by setting autospawn=no in /etc/pulse/client.conf.

Mint 20.2 removes the ability to prevent PulseAudio from runnung. Please restore our ability to prevent PulseAudio from running.

[Hoser Rob]

I haven't seen any such problems here other than yours, so I suspect the problem isn't as widespread as you think.

What "ALSA apps" are you talkling about? If you installed them on your system, where did you get them?

And there's no useful system info there at all, copy/paste the text output of inxi -Fxxxrz run in the terminal.

[rene]

Although I have told you in your other complain-thread what the right way is to do what you want, since you are incapable of understanding that better advise, just for you:

Code: Select all

systemctl --user mask pulseaudio.socket && systemctl --user stop pulseaudio

[FeralUrchin]

I'm puzzled by your difficulty understanding my posts. PulseAudio intercepts and interferes wih the arrival times of audio frames sent by a video editor I wrote, which uses ALSA.

When pulseAudio is running, during video file playback, the audio track may finish well before the video track finishes, or may finish well after the video track has finished (I've seen each case). I've written code that carefully syncronizes the video and audio tracks during playback that works extremely well when pulseAudio is not running.

To summarize, my ALSA using video app runs correctly only if pulseaudio is prevented from running. In Mint 18.3, to prevent pulseAudio from being started automatically, one could set autospawn=no in /etc/pulse/client.conf. This worked just fine to enable my editor to run properly (i.e. syncronize video and audio frames). Mint 20.2 removes our ability to use this technique, since pulseAudio now is started automatically and unconditionally at boot time regardless of the autospawn setting (or any other setting I can find).

My preferred workaround at the moment is to delete /usr/bin/pulseaudio, since I don't run apps that depend on it. A better solution would be for Mint to restore the capability to prevent pulseAudio from being started automatically and unconditionally at boot or any other time.

My request is that Mint do so; that is, restore the feature in Mint 18.3 that accomplished this. Some developer somewhere in Debian/Ububtu/Mint made a change that now creates mischief for those of us that address the audio hardware directly using ALSA, and who don't want the interference of an audio server.

My hope was that by posting here a trouble ticket would be forwarded to a responsible developer. If this outcome is not likely then we can drop this matter and cease taking up each others' time with it. I do appreciate the time and effort you have spent responding.

FYI at least one other (and I believe several others) have posted similar issues in this forum with pulseAudio..

[rene]

I'm puzzled by your difficulty understanding my posts. PulseAudio intercepts and interferes wih the arrival times of audio frames sent by a video editor I wrote, which uses ALSA.

No. It. Does. Not.

Not going to repeat in any further detail the thing I said a few times now as to simply using an ALSA device (and clearly not one that reroutes via PulseAudio) so as to have PulseAudio nowhere around your audio path, most definitely not "intercepting" anything. From your first rant on it is clear that you have no idea how any of this layers, so much so in fact that you ought to know at least that much. But rather than ask a question and/or seemingly even sticking what I answered with anyway into Google you just rant on and "suggest" that the world needs to change just so as to accommodate your misconceptions of it.

Fairly fundamentally can not stand exactly that. Good luck with your video editor. You'll need it...

[Hoser Rob]

... Good luck with your video editor. You'll need it...

No kidding.

[FeralUrchin]

I don't need luck with my video editor. I need pulseaudio gone. My consistent experience over ten years is that having pulseaudio running prevents my otherwise highly successful code to synchronize audio with video from working. Stopping pulseaudio enables it to run correctly.

Try to absorb two very simple facts that so far rene and you have refused to acknowlege:

1) my app runs fine with pulseaudio not running. My app fails to synchronize audio with video when pulseaudio is running. I'm not making this up. If you don't like my attemped explanation re "intercepting and interfering", then offer one of your own to explain this behavior.

2) Mint 18.3 allows setting autospawn=no in /etc/pulse/client.conf to prevent pulseaudio from being started. [BTW if pulseaudio were not known to cause problems then why this option to prevent its running?] Mint 20.2 takes this capability away and pulseaudio is started automatically and (as far as I can determine) unconditionally. There are also one or more other similar complaints about this new "feature" in this forum. Surely you can find it (them).

Because you two consistently refuse to address the above two points, which I have articulated plainly and repeatedly, I conclude that Mint has nothing to offer on these issues.

With the ineffectiveness and incivility of your responses, good luck seeing Mint more widely adopted.

[Flemur]

my app runs fine with pulseaudio not running.

Why don't you disable or uninstall it?