Installing Pulseaudio

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Pulseaudio is a rather new audio backend that is generally considered to be a really promising technology. One of the main advantages at this moment is that is supports multiple audio streams to soundcards that otherwise do not (fully) support it. The infamous Intel HDA chips on laptops often cause problems in situations where e.g. you are playing music via Amarok, and you get an incoming Skype call. Skype sound will be unavailable, or your microphone is not activated.

In order to get Pulseaudio working on MEPIS 7, I used two important pieces of information. The links are given at the end.

Here's how to proceed:

Contents

[edit]

Install the required packages.

 apt-get install libasound2-plugins libao-pulse libpulse-browse0 libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulse0 pulseaudio 
 pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-hal pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-module-zeroconf pulseaudio-utils
[edit]

Set the correct permissions

 Open kuser and add yourself and the user pulse to the groups pulse, pulse-rt and pulse-access
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Create file to configure ALSA

ALSA can run on top of Pulseaudio. So your applications can use ALSA (most of them), whereas sound will be handled via the underlying Pulseaudio layer. 

 Open a console
 su to become root
 cd /etc
 mcedit asound.conf
 copy and paste the text below and save the file

  pcm.pulse {
      type pulse
  }

  ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
    type pulse
} 

# Part I directly from ALSA Dmix Wiki

pcm.mycard {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 1024
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"     
        period_time 0
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 8192
       #format "S32_LE"
       #periods 128
        rate 44100
    }
}

pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "mycard"
}

# This following device can fool some applications into using pulseaudio
pcm.dsp1 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "pulse"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}

# Part II directly from Pulseaudio Wiki

pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}

# Optional, set defaults

pcm.!default {
    type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}

Almost done. In order to make sure that Pulseaudio starts when needed: 

 As root in console: 
 cd /etc/pulse
 mcedit client.conf
 find the line with the word Autospawn, uncomment it and make sure it reads:
 Autospawn = yes

We can now start Pulseaudio like this: 

 As root in console:
 pulseaudio --system=1 -high-priority=1 -D

You should now be able to normally play sounds in applications that support ALSA.

[edit]

Special settings

For Skype, I had to go into Options, and change all sound devices to pulse (sound in, sound out and sound ringing). I can now use the microphone in Skype regardless of other sounds playing

For sound in Flash I had to download the file libflashsupport_1.0~2219-2_i386.deb from this page. Once it is downloaded, just (double) click and install with Kpackage

If you run Virtualbox, Pulseaudio is natively supported. Just set Virtualbox to use Pulseaudio for sound. In my case, it allowed me to use the microphone from within Virtualbox (great, since I sometimes use Webex with VOIP teleconferencing). That had not worked before.

A number of applications still have problems with Pulseaudio, notably Audacity. Work is being done, so who knows it'll work soon. For now, you need to kill Pulseaudio whenever you wish to use Audacity. It means you cannot record audio using Audacity either, sorry.

OK, enjoy. As promised, the external links: [1] [2]

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