[Pkg-games-ubuntu] [Bug 503780] Re: OpenAL Soft doesn't work with PulseAudio (Ubuntu's default sound system)

[Vincent François]

Hello, good evening,

I just received this message from the email list openal-devel.
As I said in the previous post, OpenAL works correctly with PulseAudio.

To convince you, here is the message :

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New version is up and ready:

http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal.html

This release fixes compatibility with PulseAudio 0.9.21, and makes PulseAudio 
the default backend (if PA is not available, it will still fall back to ALSA, 
OSS, etc). The PulseAudio backend will also attempt to match an output format 
and frequency as reported by the default sink, if an override was not set in 
the config file (so if Pulse is configured for 5.1 output, OpenAL Soft will 
automatically pick that up and render 5.1; no extra configuration needed).

The crash with the echo effect is fixed, and reverb has been improved. It now 
supports the Modulation and Echo properties. Multi-channel sources are also 
passed through the auxiliary sends, as a mono mix, so they will work with 
auxiliary slot effects.

There is also a new head-dampening config option, which slightly filters 
sources emanating behind the listener, for mono and stereo output. It also 
supports the AL_EXT_source_distance_model extension, as described here 
<http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal-extensions/EXT_source_distance_model.txt>. 
Additionally, there is a new config option to select between 3 resamplers: 
nearest (no interpolation), linear (default), and cosine.


The next version will hopefully see more of the experimental extensions 
completed, better resamplers (such as cubic), and more. I'll also try to get 
out more frequent releases if major issues turn up.


Thanks for looking! Please feel free to try it out, and let me know how it 
works for you. :)

- Chris
_______________________________________________
Openal-devel mailing list
Openal-devel at opensource.creative.com
http://opensource.creative.com/mailman/listinfo/openal-devel

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Thank's you

Vincent Francois <vincentfrancois.pro at gmail.com>, France country.

-- 
OpenAL Soft doesn't work with PulseAudio (Ubuntu's default sound system)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/503780
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Status in “openal-soft” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
Status in “pulseaudio” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released

Bug description:
OpenAL Soft (the default OpenAL implementation) causes troubles in combination with PulseAudio that is used by default on the Ubuntu desktop. These troubles can be very different going from just no sound to crashes and freezes of apps that use OpenAL (mostly games).

The root cause for this seems to be that OpenAL Soft doesn't use it's new pulse output on systems with pulse running ( http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup#OpenALApplications ) and/or the pulse output is a bit buggy. So instead of using Pulse directly (& correctly) it uses ALSA as it's output and because ALSA also has a pulse plugin the sound is routed to PulseAudio and then back to ALSA. But this seems to be buggy, in Ubuntu at least ;).

I did this new report to synergize all the efforts of the various reports about this issue, so there is already plenty of information on the different troubles and on suggested solutions in the duplicates. That's why we should try to stay focused here.