Hey everyone! I'm trying to get my Home Theater PC running with Ubuntu, but I'm having a really tough time with the audio setup. I've got a Lenovo Thinkstation E30 with an Asus Xonar Sound card and an old Yamaha Surround Receiver that only accepts SPDIF input. In Windows, playing back audio or video files with AC3/DTS is super easy—just one click in VLC! However, in Ubuntu, it feels like a nightmare. I had to completely uninstall PulseAudio and PipeWire just to get ALSA working, and VLC still doesn't cooperate. I managed to get it working with KODI eventually, but now I'm stuck since PulseAudio is gone and only ALSA is active, so I have no output devices available. Also, I'm pretty sure Firefox can't use ALSA. So, is there any way to use ALSA with Firefox and other Ubuntu applications? And can someone explain why audio setups in Linux are generally so complicated? I love using Ubuntu but this has been so frustrating!
3 Answers
I wonder if you would have had a smoother experience with Haruna instead. It worked fine for me when VLC was giving me a headache. But I guess now you've made changes to your audio setup—so it might be tricky to switch things around now.
Have you thought about trying JACK? It might just do the trick for you! I haven't used it too much myself, but I helped set up some Ubuntu studio machines, and JACK really helped with routing audio. Firefox has supported it since 2017, and it works fine alongside PulseAudio, so it could give you the flexibility you're looking for! Definitely worth some research and testing.
Honestly, it's not necessary to ditch PipeWire to use ALSA. PipeWire is more about bridging audio/video protocols, so maybe there’s an underlying hardware compatibility issue here. Just a thought!
From what I've read, ALSA communicates directly with the hardware, while PulseAudio and PipeWire can interfere with that. For my situation, it seems like I need a clean audio stream to my receiver for proper decoding, which is why I opted for ALSA. I don't think it's a hardware compatibility issue.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely check it out!