I want my reliable laptop based Amarok jukebox back

[Alan Ezust]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 5:29 AM, Myriam Schweingruber <myriam at kde.org>wrote:

> Hi Martin,
>
> On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Martin Steigerwald <Martin at lichtvoll.de>
> wrote:
> > I do not use Pulseaudio 4 right now cause it still does not detect the
> USB
> > sound card at all times, spamming logs with "usb_set_interface_failed"
> > messages. I reported this once, Lennart even answered me back to my bug
> report
> > and I admit I did not follow up then, cause what he asked me to do would
> have
> > take some time to do and it was not the only bug with PulseAudio back
> then. I
> > was just so annoyed by PulseAudio back then that I apt-get purge´d it. I
> would
> > be willing to follow-up with this, as it seems that Pulseaudio 4 is the
> first
> > Pulseaudio *ever* that is able to play *fluent* sound on the ThinkPad
> T42. With
> > Pulseaudio 3 still I had sound drops longer than 20 seconds (this is *no*
> > joke).
>
> Kubuntu uses Pulseaudio by default, and Phonon is compiled with PA
> support, which should be pretty standard currently. If you did remove
> Pulseaudio deliberately this might explain some of the sound problems
> you experience.
>

In my experience, some of the cheaper external USB sound cards are not
constantly reliable. They sometimes just disconnect and reconnect after
running fine for a long time. If you want something reliable, use an
internal or PCI or PCI-e sound card. I've been using an Audiophile 24/96
for over 10 years now for its digital sound capabilities.

Furthermore, in my experience, PulseAudio is also not very reliable. When I
apt-get remove pulseaudio and just use ALSA directly, I have a more stable
system in general.
I wish Pulse was more reliable, because without it, I can't share my
digital soundcard between amarok and other apps such as VLC or my browser.
Using Alsa, Amarok takes over that device and other apps must use my analog
output.

On Windows, I also notice Amarok (2.7.0) is not very stable/reliable It
often crashes the first time I execute it, so I have to run it another 1-2
times before I get the main window.
Further, it often just stops playing after a track is over, and I can't
figure out why.
So if I want a stable Amarok running, it seems it can't be on Windows yet.
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