Audio is working but not in X-Plane

TomaLars · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2019 Posts: 44

Hi gentoonians the story goes like this:
I have ALSA installed and everything was fine.
I have installed two weeks ago JACK audio server because I play sometimes with an audio interface and everything is fine.

Yesterday, after a month or so, I run X-Plane (the simulator game) and the audio didn't work.
I have checked my ~/.asoundrc file, the audio interfaces, I have run the speaker-test, checked alsamixer, played some music with ncmpcpp, played a couple of audio files from the browser....everything works.
I run X-Plane again...no sound even if the audio settings in the simulator are correct.
I have updated X-Plane...no sound.

I have mentioned the JACK audio server because this is the only change that I have done in the last month. But the audio server is off and the audio interface is not plugged in when I am at the simulator.

Does anybody know how I can find the error? Maybe I use JACK wrong (it might be..). Maybe there is some kind of conflict with X-Plane and I need support from them.
Thanks for your support.

alamahant · Advocate Joined: 23 Mar 2019 Posts: 3961

Most probably X-Plane needs pulseaudio.
Try appending

TomaLars · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2019 Posts: 44

Hi alamahant,
to be honest I have never had pulse audio on my gentoo system.
Audio worked from day one in X-Plane with ALSA only.
I don't really know if X-Plane needs OpenAL because it didn't complain about it...I have to check.

Thanks for the tip about Pulse Audio.
I am going to keep it as last chance because I have also JACK on my system and I don't want to run into problems.
The JACK community suggests to use JACK along Pulse Audio only in few cases and it seems that I am not in one of those.
Let's see..

Regarding your question: I have downloaded X-Plane demo installer and launched it as a script. Of course chmod +x to the file first.
The installation folder must be in your home directory to stay away from root permissions.
Yoke, joystick and rudder work pretty good. At the beginning I had to write a udev rule and I asked help to the gentoo community.
Give it a try if you want. With the demo you can fly for just 15 minutes.

i4dnf · Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 6:48 am Post subject:

X-Plane 11 uses/needs both openal and pulseaudio. In particular the fmod sound system/effects needs pulseaudio.
Unfortunately it needs real pulseaudio, apulse won't work.
You can make a wrapper script to launch pulseaudio just for X-Plane, for example i have the following in my launch_xp11 script:

Ralphred · l33t Joined: 31 Dec 2013 Posts: 768

i4dnf · Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 7:49 pm Post subject:

I think the default for client is autospawn=no, since the line is commented here and there's no autospawning whatsoever for pulseaudio.
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not MAD" (SALVATOR DALI)

Ralphred · l33t Joined: 31 Dec 2013 Posts: 768

Erdie · Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2022 1:43 pm Post subject:

I have the same issue unfortunately. Here are my questions:

Are you sure that X-Plane really needs pulseaudio even if openal is between the backend and the application layer? Why can´t openal just been configured to use alsa als backend? Why does this have influence on Xplane which is on top of openal?
Background: I want to avoid using pulse in any case because I am worried that it will disturb the rest of my system which is running flawless for a very long time. In fact I did configure .alsoftrc without success so far. If I am wrong I would be able to understand why pulseaudio cannot be avoided. If this is clear I will cancel all ambitions concerning X-Plane.

BTW I ran the test version 1 year ago flawless and today nothing works anymore. XPlane seems to have changed their sound architecture recently.
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i4dnf · Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:10 pm Post subject:

Yes, unfortunately X-plane (actually the fmod sound system it uses complementing openal) needs a real, running instance of pulseaudio. Configuring openAL to work with ALSA works, but just for some of the sounds (IIRC the ATC comms are via openAL).
_________________
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not MAD" (SALVATOR DALI)

Erdie · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2022 8:03 am Post subject:

I had already given up, but if there is any workaround, please inform me. I am not willing to install pulse on my system, which works flawless without it for many years.
_________________
Desktop AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 32GB RAM, Asus GF GTX 1060.
Notebook Tuxedo Pulse 15 Gen1 AMD Ryzen 7 4800H mit Radeon Vega 7
Raspberry Pi 1 + 2 + 3B+ + Zero W

l_bratch · Guru Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 494 Location: Jersey

X-Plane 11 works fine with ALSA (no PulseAudio) for me, but note that it *only* seems to use the highest number ALSA device. I cannot convince it to use any other device using ALSA or OpenAL configuration files.

So in my case I have three ALSA outputs:

- The correct sound card (ALSA card 0) which uses kernel module snd-ens1371
- The wrong sound card (ALSA card 1) which uses kernel module snd-hda-intel
- ALSA's aloop (ALSA card 2) which uses kernel module snd-aloop

So before starting X-Plane I just rmmod snd-hda-intel && rmmod snd-aloop, start the game, then modprobe snd-hda-intel && modprobe snd-aloop.

If anyone does figure out how to pick an ALSA device in X-Plane, I'd love to know!

Erdie · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 8:29 am Post subject:

l_bratch · Guru Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 494 Location: Jersey

Erdie · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 9:58 am Post subject: