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W4GPL
08-08-2010, 11:06 AM
The Pulseaudio Utils package is pretty poorly documented, anyone have much experience with parecord and paplay?

Though I have a reasonable work around, I'm mostly curious what I'm doing wrong..

Computer A (192.168.0.2): Fedora 13 - Pulseaudio (network enabled) -- Using microphone input on internal sound card to capture audio from HF radio.

Computer B (192.168.0.1): Fedora 13 - Pulseaudio


[jeff@jeff ~]$ parecord --server=192.168.0.2 --format=u8 --rate=8000 --channels=1|paplay
Failed to open audio file.
write() failed: Broken pipe

[jeff@jeff ~]$ parecord --server=192.168.0.2 --format=u8 --rate=8000 --channels=1|paplay --format=u8 --rate=8000 --channels=1
Failed to open audio file.
write() failed: Broken pipe

[jeff@jeff ~]$ parecord --server=192.168.0.2 --format=u8 --rate=8000 --channels=1|aplay
Playing raw data 'stdin' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
The last one works. Now for various reasons, I want to pump this stream directly back out onto Computer B's speakers using entirely native Pulseaudio, rather than having to use Alsa's Pulse plugin.

I'm missing something with parecord/paplay -- should I be able to simply play the stream using paplay and not have to pipe the auto? I mostly want to be able to name the streams in the mixer and I can't do that when using Alsa's Pulse plugin.

Also, for what it's worth, when I and '-' to the end of 'paplay', I get the same results.

W4GPL
08-08-2010, 11:10 AM
For what it's worth..

[jeff@jeff ~]$ ssh jeff@192.168.0.2 arecord -D pulse|paplay -n "HF Radio"
Recording WAVE 'stdin' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
Works.. as does...

[jeff@jeff ~]$ ssh jeff@192.168.0.2 arecord -D pulse|aplay
Recording WAVE 'stdin' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
Playing WAVE 'stdin' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
But obviously pipe'ing it over SSH adds quite a bit of latency and is a bit more resource taxing. But it will let me pipe to paplay, yet parecord won't?

And I'm certain the answer is going to make me feel really dumb.

KC2UGV
08-08-2010, 11:34 AM
This is how I can tell I'm a curmudgeon. I remove pulseaudio and reinstall alsa...

These are the types of issues I run into using pulseaudio. soundmodem doesn't play too nicely with pulse.

W4GPL
08-08-2010, 11:36 AM
This is how I can tell I'm a curmudgeon. I remove pulseaudio and reinstall alsa...

These are the types of issues I run into using pulseaudio. soundmodem doesn't play too nicely with pulse.Can't speak to Ubuntu's implementation of it, but Pulse has really come a long way in a few months. I was a real hater myself, but now I'm starting to embrace its potential. It's the future of desktop audio in Linux, might as well learn it and help improve it all at the same time.

As soon as I figure out this paplay pipe issue, I'm going to try the multicast options, I can see that being very cool for various HTPC scenarios.

ad4mg
08-08-2010, 03:56 PM
I'm not into the advanced pulseaudio stuff here yet. Hell, on 2 of my machines, I have to manually kill pulseaudio and start it again after nearly every reboot.

When it works, it works very well. I am quite impressed with the script for the pulseaudio 11 band equalizer, which does a hell of a job on my 5.1 system in the house.

W4GPL
08-09-2010, 10:35 AM
Using the 'parecord -s 192.168.0.2|arecord' thing introduces about 20 seconds of latency after about an hour. Though using aplay/arecord via SSH doesn't. Go figure.