Re: [PATCH 2/2] gnu: Add espeak.

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de> skribis:
>
>> I’m not using pulseaudio; for me it’s just ALSA for regular software +
>> JACK for “professional” audio where sync and timing matters.
>
> That’s what I expected.  ;-)
>
>> I’m not very knowledgeable about pulseaudio, unfortunately.  As
>> pulseaudio can manage audio streams using various different backends
>> from pulseaudio-agnostic software, what really is to be gained by adding
>> pulseaudio to the inputs?  AFAIK using pulseaudio directly is not much
>> different from using ALSA and configuring pulseaudio to manage this
>> stream.
>
> As you note, the main difference is configuration.  For ALSA-lib to use
> PulseAudio, one has to drop the relevant ~/.asoundrc, but it seems that
> it does not always work properly.
>
> For instance, my ~/.asoundrc reads this:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> # FIXME: alsamixer & co. from alsa-utils don't support it.
>
> pcm.!default {
>     type pulse
> }
>
> # ctl.!default {
> #     type pulse
> # }
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> I don’t recall the details of the FIXME and the commented-out part,
> though.
>
> For GuixSD I think it would be best if everything would automatically go
> through PulseAudio, without the user having to configure obscure things.

Couldn’t we then just install the appropriate /etc/asound.conf (maybe
with a “pulseaudio-alsa” service)?  Users could still overwrite it by
disabling the service or with “~/.asoundrc”.

A similar configuration is provided on Arch by the “pulseaudio-alsa”
package, which should be sufficient to route all ALSA audio streams
through Pulseaudio.

Wouldn’t that be a better solution than to add the pulseaudio package to
the inputs wherever possible?

~~ Ricardo