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Because of skype sound issues I was told to replace pulseaudio with alsa. I only found a solution for Ubuntu 10.10.

Does this still work for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin?
Or does it still not make any sense to replace pulseaudio with alsa (as Jorge Castro said in his comment)?
Or should I stick to pulseaudio AND alsa?
I don't want to mess up my system. Thanks!

Community
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Filbuntu
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  • You should definitely stick with pulseaudio AND alsa. I haven't used skype too much, so I can't exactly give suggestions on fixing that though. Sorry! – MiJyn Jul 19 '12 at 02:20
  • @lkjoel Thanks for the comment. Can you explain me why I should stick to both? – Filbuntu Jul 19 '12 at 06:28
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    Nearly all components in Ubuntu work with pulseaudio (with ALSA being the backend). I have had no problems with Skype audio with Pulseaudio + ALSA, so all I can say is that you can fix your problem using both :) – MiJyn Jul 19 '12 at 17:57
  • If you really want to remove pulseaudio, you can try this (I haven't tested using 12.04): http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/ubuntu-904-jaunty-keeping-the-beast-pulseaudio-at-bay/ – MiJyn Jul 19 '12 at 17:58
  • @lkjoel Thanks for the further info. I don't really want to remove pulseaudio that is why I asked the question, but want to get a solution for my sound problems. It would be helpful to hear from somebody that tested the removing pulseaudio in Ubuntu 12.04. – Filbuntu Jul 23 '12 at 04:59
  • I had problems with sound thought HDMI and the only solution that seems to work was remove pulseaudio and install a newer alsa version, all this with Ubuntu 12.04

    I am not very fond of the solution, and I do not know if it will fix your Skype problem. (my problem was with all hdmi sound) but what I did was follow the instruction at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/InstallingLinuxAlsaDriverModules to upgrade alsa to latest version.

    and then uninstall pulseaudio doing sudo apt-get autoremove --purge pulseaudio

    Beware with the last step.. you will lose a lot of things, including volume control.

     – Fernando Sep 21 '12 at 00:48
  • @Fernando Thanks a lot for your first-hand report. I will look into upgrading the Alsa-Driver. You write that you will lose a lot of things when uninstalling pulseaudio. What exactly do you lose, apart from the volume control? – Filbuntu Sep 21 '12 at 04:57
  • I didn't do a extensive research, because I was turning my pc into a media center and the only program that I care was XBMC but I remember that I had no volume control, neither the ability to change output device (at least without command line) and problems when multiples applications were trying to do sound output simultaneously. – Fernando Sep 22 '12 at 16:33
  • gstreamer0.10-alsa package has no effect on scratchy skype sound (Version 4.0.0.8 ) – Gorog Imre Oct 16 '12 at 00:23

2 Answers2

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This seems to work, though you must understand that it isn't replacing pulseaudio with alsa but just removing pulseaudio(the front-end).

sudo apt-get autoremove pulseaudio

However alsa still needs a graphical user interface for you to easily communicate with it say goodbye to the easy integrated indicator that Ubuntu comes with

sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer

You can also do all of this in the Ubuntu Software Centre.

UbuntuHusker
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I solved my problem after months and months of not being able to get it working properly. The only way I could get the mic to work with Skype was to switch off Pulse by setting 'autospawn=off', and then I'd lose my lovely desktop volume control, until:- I discovered that this laptop has "stereo, or mono" input via the built in microphone (sorry, can't remember which), but the solution was to open pavucontrol, split the channels on the input (microphone) and reduce the volume of one of the channels to zero. Works perfectly, haven't had a problem since. I now use Alsa and Pulse, all normal and I have all the useful sound controls of pulse with the alsa backend.

oneandy
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