I've been trying to install pulseaudio, and I can't seem to find a straight answer about what to do about ALSA. Does PulseAudio run on top of ALSA? Should I get rid of ALSA first? ALSA is a sound server, right? So is PulseAudio... As you can tell I'm somewhat confused. Anyway right now I seem to have both - except neither seems to be working :-\
/etc/asound.conf contains:
pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}
pulseaudio is indeed running. However, trying "amixer -Dpulse" results in
ALSA lib control.c:874:(snd_ctl_open_conf) Cannot open shared library
/usr/lib64/alsa-lib/libasound_module_ctl_pulse.so
amixer: Mixer attach pulse error: No such file or directory`
I checked and the file is indeed not there. I do however have
/usr/lib32/alsa-lib/libasound_module_ctl_pulse.so
Playing a song in VLC will make the stream show up in pavucontrol, but no audio will make its way to my speakers... I am in groups pulse
and pulse-access
(not entirely sure what they're for, but figured they can't hurt), and have followed the guide http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup to the letter.
Update:
Oddly enough, when I delete /etc/asound.conf, audio streams still show up in pavucontrol... so... is pulseaudio actually running? Am I using it? How can I tell?