FIREHOSE: For Improving & Recognizing Emergent Human Open Source Endeavors

I have been using Debian GNU/Linux since 1996. In recent versions of Debian and most of the follow-on distributions (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Ubuntu Studio, etc), the audio stack has been migrated to PulseAudio + ALSA. This has caused problems when wanting to use non-free software like Skype, and the Adobe Flash Plugin. These applications need to have their audio-input streams “pointed” to the right place by PulseAudio.

Not being a PulseAudio developer, I had no idea that the PulseAudio utilites were mandatory in correctly configuring PulseAudio. Here’s what you need:

# aptitude install pavucontrol pavumeter paman paprefs rtkit


Of that set, pavucontrol is the most important. It will allow you to properly configure the input stream for audio applications. Under KDE, this application shows up as Multimedia > Volume Control in the Kicker menus.

When you run pavucontrol, it will only show you active streams. So if you want to call someone using Skype, for example, the configuration for the ALSA plugin is done using pavucontrol, and when the call starts, the stream will appear. Change the stream input on the Recording tab. Here’s a picture when you bring up the app with no input stream:

And here’s what it looks like when you open up a new stream (Skype in this case):

Pulse Audio Volume Control with an active stream

Change the pop-up menu item and you should be sorted with PulseAudio inputs working properly.

Thanks.

have a day.yad
jdpf