Setting up PulseAudio in Debian Lenny

Hi All,

This post explains how to setup PulseAudio in Debian 6 in the most simplest manner and also the need for it...

Right...

Setting it up...

Its pretty simple.. Open your Synaptic Package manager and search for these 2 packages and install them...

1. gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio

2. pulseaudio

as root and also make sure you can solve all dependencies... Do mail me: ananth dot gouri at gmail dot com for any doubts solving dependencies problems...

So this sets up your PulseAudio... So how to make sure that your Pulse Audio redirects to old ALSA or OSS??

Open a terminal and hit this command:

pulseaudio --system=1 --high-priority=1 -D


This starts the pulse audio server with a high priority...

If this does not give you any errors (Denoted by E) then you have successfully started it...

So why PulseAudio??


The recent AlsaUtils used in distributions like Debian and Ubuntu had lots of issues due to the changes done in software... Some of them being..

1. If you are playing a youtube video - then you cant get back and play a song in your local system with sound to it
2. If you were playing a local mp3 - then if you go to youtube it wont play the sound..
3. You cant play more than 1 song in 2 different players locally...
4. You cant watch a video and hear to a song as well simultaneously...
5. You cant listen to the sound from your rear headphone slot and as well as from your front headphone slot in your latest supported CPUs...
6. You can also listen to sound coming out of your loud speakers even when your headphone is put up and not a loud speaker in your laptop audio out...

and many more...

Many people suggest the users to use the older alsautil package and many others also suggest using a GTK that would help to select a Default Hardware Sound Device....

The optimum solution to this problem is to install the PulseAudio and this would solve all these above problems...

Now you can play songs in more than 2 players simultaneously, play a youtube video and then close that window and start listening to a mp3 locally...

Now to solve the step 6.. If you check your Sound preferences - you can find something as Analog Output and Analog Headphones.. Just select the Headphone option...

You can as well give a permanent solution to this problem by telling - the pulse audio to overtake (automatically redirect to) ALSA or OSS if 2 or more sound outputs are needed by doing the following..

edit the file

/etc/pulse/client.conf and

uncomment the line

autospawn = yes

Enjoy,
Ananth