ubuntu-audio-dev team mailing list archive

[David Henningsson <launchpad.web@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Brad Figg wrote:
> Those of you outside the company may not know but the Platform/Distro
> Team will be sprinting in Portland, OR USA, Feb. 1 - 5. It looks like
> I'm on the kernel team agenda to run an audio round table.
> 
> I'd like to see Luke and Conor join in the discussion as well as anyone
> else they'd like to bring along.
> 
> I'm sending this email out to solicit input from everyone as to the
> topics they'd like to see us address. Things that come immediately to
> my mind are:
>   1. How does everyone feel about the current state of audio (alsa
>      as well as pulse) in Lucid?

Glad you brought it up. Here's my very subjective list of interest:

* Alsa-plugins-pulse have been buggy for a long time. I've traced down
one important bug (LP: #485488) but there's still the startup race /
obsolete underrun thing to fix (LP: #464008). I've asked twice on the
pulse mailinglist for comments/solutions but haven't got an answer, so
probably they're as unsure as I am of the best way to fix/workaround it...

* I'm curiously observing the Jack-in-main process. Will Jack reach main
in time to be properly tested with Lucid? There are quite a few
applications in main (not only pulseaudio) with a Jack backend, will
they be recompiled and tested with Jack support in time for Lucid?

* The logout sound. Still not working for me. It's not that having a
logout sound is a very important feature to me, it's more like this
long-standing bug is saying to us that we can't even get the simple
things right... (Even though fixing it turns out to be harder than it
seems at first glance.)

Another checklist could be the KarmicCaveats page. Let's see how we're
doing:

* Wrong Kernel Version: Let's leave that to the grub people and pray
that it does not happen again.

* Sound drivers need to be updated: That's ABMAKG and a separate
discussion.

* Another process locking the sound card: Daniel has sorted out the
slmodemd problem. Timidity is still unsolved; I got a report that the
solution suggested does not work. It has been discussed at the
pulseaudio mailinglist but no good solution has come up.

* Advanced mixer (volume control): A lot of people still need alsamixer
and that is not going away for Lucid, I'm afraid. Gnome's switch to
pulseaudio causes a regression in that regard. I wish there was an
"advanced" button in g-v-c which brought up the original ALSA mixer.

* Volume range anomalies: Hardware dependent, due to buggy drivers (or
hardware). I believe Daniel does some work in fixing those as they come up.

* Volume not stored, or muted after reboots: I think Daniel has fixed
that one for Lucid.

* No sound or stuttering sound in SDL-based games: Mainly fixed by
including libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio into ubuntu-desktop for Lucid
(thanks Daniel).

* Alternate channel mappings needed for ICE1712: According to Daniel's
blog post, that would be fixed for Lucid, but I don't actually know the
status.

* Cards needing non-free firmware: An interesting one I added recently.
I've been talking to the maintainer of linux-firmware and hopefully most
of alsa-firmware will go into linux-firmware soon (some of it is already
there). Since Ubuntu swallows linux-firmware without much hesitation,
that'll reduce the need for alsa-firmware.

>   2. Should we be anticipating the need/desire of an audio LBM right
>      from the start?

As for ABMAKG, I've seen two or three people I've recommended to do that
report back that it breaks booting of their systems. That is something
to look out for.

>   3. How do we get a handle on our audio bugs? What should we be doing
>      w.r.t. bugs that we are not doing now?

Fixing more of them ;-) Daniel is the #1 hero here I think, and deserves
much praise for all of his work. But needless to say, we need more
qualified people to help us out. How we can attract more (qualified)
people to the world of Ubuntu Audio, is always something to think about.

I think it works pretty well with the apport-collect information, it
gives enough information to give a diagnosis in many cases. However, we
also have the answers on launchpad which don't get the attention they
deserve. We need the apport-collect information there as well, and I
also think we should set ubuntu audio team as answer contacts for the
packages it receives bug notifications for. What do you think?

> Any and all input is welcome.

If you want any and all input, go and talk to /dev/random ;-) Seriously,
I'm looking forward to Lucid. The latest kernel is already more stable
on my system than Karmic is (but that's mainly due to better video
drivers). It still amazes me how this network of open source people
(some paid, some unpaid), who all are doing their small piece of the
puzzle, end up with something that works better and better for each day.

// David