[L2Ork-dev] Flatpak build - audio backend testing

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 9:32 AM Sam Thursfield <ssssam at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> I spent this morning trying to improve the 'out of the box' audio
> driver experience for Purr Data on Linux/Flatpak, and I'm inviting
> anyone interested to test a branch from
> https://github.com/flathub/net.purrdata.PurrData/pull/22
>
> In Flatpak, the ALSA backend already works for direct audio hardware
> access, but a well behaved app should also be able to share hardware
> with PulseAudio. Previously I tried to do this with the OSS backend
> and `padsp`, which worked pretty badly in my experience (and... OSS
> was deprecated almost 20 years ago).
>
> The new approach is to use ALSA but also pass `-alsaadd pulse` on the
> commandline, so PD's audio is routed to PulseAudio by default. I hope
> it works better, but please test to let me know :)

I think this could be quite useful for Purr Data.

A few questions:

1. I haven't read the ALSA Adventure Dungeon Map in a while. Is
"pulse" really a valid ALSA device,
or are you reusing the "-alsaadd" interface for the purpose of
re-routing to pulse?

2. Are you suggesting to have Purr Data on Linux default to "-alsaadd
pulse" and to have that device
selected by default? I think that's a good idea as newcomers will be
able to run youtube tutorials at the
same time as Purr Data.

3. If #2 above is the case, does anything in the Audio preferences tab
need to change? In other words,
are "sample rate", "block size", and "delay" still operational while
using the pulse device?

4. With the pulse device selected and a youtube video paused, what
happens if the user chooses a
direct-audio-hardware-access device in the audio list and clicks "Ok?"

Best,
Jonathan

>
> The test build can be installed like this:
>
>     $ flatpak install --user
> https://dl.flathub.org/build-repo/23147/net.purrdata.PurrData.flatpakref
>
> Thanks!
> Sam
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