From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] gnu: Add espeak. Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2016 17:09:17 +0100 Message-ID: <87twmcur0y.fsf@elephly.net> References: <87h9ih4l8n.fsf@gnu.org> <874megs2w4.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:52445) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aKptR-0000Zt-8Z for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 17 Jan 2016 11:09:30 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aKptQ-0005Xq-59 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 17 Jan 2016 11:09:29 -0500 In-reply-to: <874megs2w4.fsf@gnu.org> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Ludovic Courtès writes: > Ricardo Wurmus 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