padevchooser replacement?

palettentreter · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 Feb 2006 Posts: 104

I'm using ~amd64 and I'd really like to switch to pulseaudio 1.1, but how can I replace padevchooser? I need it to manage sound playback via TCP. How do I do that with >=pulseaudio-1.0?

christoph.gysin · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2011 Posts: 3

I wrote a simple padevchooser replacement that works with pulseaudio-1.x:

https://github.com/christophgysin/pasystray

No ebuild so far, feel free to write one :)

palettentreter · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 Feb 2006 Posts: 104

Nice! Thanks for the reply! I took a quick look at the code and it looks like you're doing it "the new way", i.e. you're switching the sink in the local server and migrating the stream, right? The problem with this is that module-tunnel-sink is unreliable and buggy if it is used to connect to a networked sink. Also network sink autodetection via avahi is broken by IPv6-enabled avahi: http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/694. The entire problem has been discussed here: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-discuss/2011-December/012478.html

So in a nutshell, it would be totally awesome if pasystray could (in addition) support the "old" way, i.e. changing the PULSE_SERVER property of the X11 root window. With this method the client connects directly to the networked server, which requires a client restart, but works reliably with almost all applications. I'd be willing to come up with a patch if you're fine with the general idea.

christoph.gysin · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2011 Posts: 3

Yes, pasystray allows setting the default sink/source on the local server and moves streams between sources/sinks on the fly. I'm aware of the IPv6 issue with pulseaudio, but since I don't have a need for IPv6 I can workaround by disabling it in avahi.

The tunnel module issue is annoying though, and doesn't seem to be worked on upstream. So I'm open to support both approaches. We'll have to implement the avahi discovering ourselves, since that got deprecated in pulseaudio-1.0 (libpulse-browse). And/or add an option to add a server by IP address.

The old/new behaviour could be changed through a simple command line switch. I don't think it's necessary to change it at runtime.

I'll happily accept patches!

christoph.gysin · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2011 Posts: 3

I just released pasystray-0.2.0, which detects pulseaudio servers over avahi and allows setting the default server via PULSE_SERVER X property.

https://github.com/downloads/christophgysin/pasystray/pasystray-0.2.0.tar.bz2