Disabling pulse audio causing problems

[MarcRandolph]

After Bug #436792 was resolved, a number of people have had to add

export EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1

(either to their launch command or to their .bashrc) in order to get audio to work correctly.
Sasa Jovic reported that he was running ubuntu (with gnome) with installed mythtv on top.

Geoffrey Pursell wrote:
I noticed this problem initially because I use pulseaudio on my Myth machine to digitally route audio from my home computers to my living room speakers. (That's kind of a killer app, actually.) If Myth is allowed to suspend PA on startup, audio players elsewhere in the home hang when trying to play through the Myth box.

export EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1 works beautifully for me so far. MythTV and emulators (mess,mame,zsnes,mednafen) all seem to work when set to use OSS. PA seems to pick up their audio without needing padsp.

[ullix (ullix)]

running gnome on ubuntu karmic:

$ apt-cache policy mythtv-frontend
mythtv-frontend:
  Installed: 0.22.0+fixes22492-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu3
  Candidate: 0.22.0+fixes22492-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 0.22.0+fixes22492-0ubuntu0+mythbuntu3 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.22.0~zrc1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com karmic/multiverse Packages

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

This won't be fixed in time for the 9.10 release, but we should expect lots more reports of this since we're already up to at least six users that have to use this work-around:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/404131

[Sasa Jovic (sasa-jovic)]

Hello, just one confirmation.

I had to add "export EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1" for upgraded mythtv on pure karmic with mythtv on top.

But, i had to reinstall machine and i do not have any audio issues with clean install.

Sorry that i can't track further on this Bug.

Greetings, Sasa

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

If export EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1 doesn't work for you, please check out some of the ideas in Bug #436792, and in the forum thread listed in that bug.

If all else fails, check out http://drowninginbugs.blogspot.com/

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

There's obviously a problem here... just exactly what it is, I don't quiet know.

[darthanubis (darthanubis)]

mythfrontend export EXPERIMeENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1 works great from cmd line, but adding export EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1 to .bashrc does not seem to affect the desired change. Maybe there is a syntax error with my .bashrc?

http://pastebin.com/m58190598

I just added the export line to the end of the script. Should I have done something different? And why is it not just a right click away to edit a default launcher in Gnome? I really don't want to create a custom launcher for Mythtv.

[John Franklin (hondaman-nc)]

This seems to some sort of design from MythTV people:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/384560

If MythTV is designing away from PulseAudio and Ubuntu is designing toward PulseAudio, then there is going to be growing conflict in subsequent releases of these. I have no idea why MythTV would choose to do this. However, I am grateful for the workaround.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

I need to use this variable to get sound working too.

Could we add this to a conffile (even commented out by default), /etc/mythfrontendrc, or some such, and have mythfrontend source that? Putting it in .bashrc or hacking your launch command is messy, IMHO.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Never mind. I just found /etc/mythtv/session-settings. Sorry for the noise.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

It might be nice to add a comment/hint to /etc/mythtv/session-settings that
  export EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1
might help solve some sound problems.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

I don't think we should add any comments here. The next version (0.23) will
have better support for pulse and that variable doesn't do anything.

What types of problems were you having? 0.22 builds should be suspending
pulseaudio when the frontend is running. The side effects of this are other
apps that would be using pulseaudio will appear "hung" until you close the
frontend.

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 22:15, Dustin Kirkland <email address hidden>wrote:

> It might be nice to add a comment/hint to /etc/mythtv/session-settings that
> export EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1
> might help solve some sound problems.
>
> --
> Disabling pulse audio causing problems
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/460579
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mythbuntu
> Developers, which is subscribed to Mythbuntu.
>

--
Mario Limonciello
<email address hidden>

[DMcCloskey (davemccloskey)]

The export trick worked for me as well.

[wurst (wurststulle)]

with mythtv 0.23rc2 (ubuntu 10.04) it is
export DEBUG_PULSE_AUDIO_ALSA_EMULATION=1