Computer Audio Asylum

Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

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Original Message

It's even worse than that

Posted by Christine Tham on November 30, 2010 at 01:20:23:
ALSA and PulseAudio have a symbiotic relationship in Ubuntu.

ALSA is configured to send audio to PulseAudio as a virtual device, PulseAudio then resamples and converts everything to (by default) 16/44.1 and sends it out to an ALSA device.

By default, ALSA dmix is configured to operate at 48kHz.

So, in the worst possible case, if dmix is enabled (and there are quite a few tutorials on the net suggesting that this be done) ...

app -> ALSA -> dmix (resample to 16/48) -> PulseAudio (resample to 16/44.1) -> ALSA sound driver -> audio device

Or, if JACK is used and configured to 192kHz (again, some naive tutorials recommending this)

app -> JACK (resample to 24/192) -> PulseAudio (resample to 16/44.1) -> ALSA sound driver -> audio device

and in the best possible scenario

app (via gstreamer or JACK etc.) -> PulseAudio (resample to 16/44.1) -> ALSA sound driver -> audio device

Sheesh! Whoever said Linux had a great architecture for audio?