Gstreamer applications fail to play media on some hardware when source audio sample rate does not match that of Pulseaudio

[Johannes Dahl]

When trying to open a movie file Totem when the movie's audio sample rate is 48000 Hz and when Pulseaudio's sample rate is set to 44100 Hz, Totem fails to play back the movie correctly. It shows video very slowly, just a frame every few seconds, and no sound can be heard. Computer responsiveness goes down dramatically and 'top' shows high CPU usage by Pulseaudio. Sometimes I can get Totem to play the movie properly (with sound and no excessive CPU usage) by pausing and/or seeking in the movie.

The reason I decided to report this against Gstreamer is this: When I set up Pulseaudio at 48000 Hz, Rhythmbox behaves in a similar way when I make it play a 44100 Hz song. On the other hand, Gnome MPlayer has no problem playing back said 48000 Hz audio through Pulseaudio set up at 44100 Hz.

This problem is limited in terms of hardware, but not specific to one computer: I can reliably reproduce this bug with CM8738 and SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit external SB0490 sound cards, the latter on both my desktop and netbook (running Maverick and Lucid respectively). But the netbook's integrated audio device Intel HD Audio does not show this problem.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio 0.10.25-4ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32~ppa1-lowlatency 2.6.38-rc5
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-5-lowlatency i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Mar 4 13:11:09 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Beta i386 (20100901.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=et:en
 LANG=et_EE.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gst-plugins-good0.10