pulseaudio not active when using exwm

pulseaudio not active when using exwm

[Eric S Fraga]

Hello all,

Using the same .xsession file, I can start up X with either a standard
window manager (e.g. StumpWM, KDE, Gnome, etc.) or alternatively Emacs
(i.e. exwm).  If I choose Emacs, my sound system is not configured
properly: only the system speaker is active.  If I choose StumpWM, say,
I have all the various sound devices available (headphones, speakers in
my monitor).

Is there something I need to specify from Emacs to get sound working?

Any hints welcome!

Thank you,
eric

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-08-14) on Debian 12.1

Re: pulseaudio not active when using exwm

[Emanuel Berg]

Eric S Fraga wrote:

> Using the same .xsession file, I can start up X with either
> a standard window manager (e.g. StumpWM, KDE, Gnome, etc.)
> or alternatively Emacs (i.e. exwm).

Technically KDE and Gnome are desktops. Window managers run on
top of those, typically, but not necessarily so, as you can
start X manually, for example with 'startx', and then start
a window manager, also manually or automated as part of
.xinitrc, thus avoiding the desktop.

See this, for example

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/conf/.xinitrc

If you do that, you have a window system (X) and a
window manager (openbsd-cwm in my case) but no desktop.

> If I choose Emacs, my sound system is not configured
> properly: only the system speaker is active. If I choose
> StumpWM, say, I have all the various sound devices available
> (headphones, speakers in my monitor).

It SOUNDS like the sound is setup as part of you launching
a desktop, e.g. Gnome or KDE, and if you don't, the sound
system, as not being part of the window manager and why should
it be, won't start with exwm.

So it is rather an issue for your Linux distribution or Unix
system, and not the WM - "how do I get the sound running on
X without Gnome?" or something.

Here are a bunch of commands that might be useful, but use
them at your own risc since I didn't have to bother with that
for ages, it just worked and not necessarily thanks to those
commands:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/.zsh/audio-test

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: pulseaudio not active when using exwm

[Eric S Fraga]

Hi Emanuel,

On Sunday, 20 Aug 2023 at 00:53, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Technically KDE and Gnome are desktops. 

Yes, sure; I was a bit sloppy.  But not the issue.

> It SOUNDS like the sound is setup as part of you launching
> a desktop, e.g. Gnome or KDE, and if you don't, the sound
> system, as not being part of the window manager and why should
> it be, won't start with exwm.

I never actually use a "desktop environment" in this sense.  StumpWW, my
backup window manager, is just that, a window manager.  As is Emacs via
exwm.  In any case, neither here nor there.

After a bit more investigation, the situation is that all other tools
which I can start up from exwm in Emacs, such as cmus, firefox, teams,
etc., can output to the other sinks.  Emacs itself also actually sees
all the sinks; that is, it can talk to pulseaudio (or pipewire).

The issue appears to be that emms doesn't want to output to anything
other than alsa so there's some emms initialization that I am missing
(but cannot identify).

Thank you,
eric

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-08-14) on Debian 12.1