Test viewer: bleeding-edge audio+voice rewrite

I feel your pain. I, too, am afflicted with this problem, even on the release and RC viewers. It's important to note that I did NOT have this issue with 1.19.1.4 or 1.20.x viewers. Only 1.21 and higher.

I have one remaining workaround that has made playing SL much more bearable and reduced the PA crashes to less than 5%: When you first launch SL, before logging on, go into Prefs and disable voice. Once you are in-world and stable, go ahead and re-enable voice.

I commented in more detail on this problem here: /263/88/301312/1.html#post2313724

1.22RC8 is now released - this version (and later) contain all this code and more, and isn't strictly experimental now, so I'm unsticking this thread.

Hugz to Tofu and the team!

I will post how to get the new version working in the latest version of Mandriva 2009 Linux, not hard, still gotta know what to do though ..... however NO Command line stuff ...... noobies can do it!

Im so excited about this!

Will run more tests and see if it crashes, but so far this is the best linux viewer for sound

(BTW I have to disable PULSE to get it working reliably...... but it is working)

Cheers

Photon

Photon, that's great! Please, please, please put together a step-by-step guide for dummies - what .rc configuration files we need to edit (if any), what modules have to be loaded at startup (if any), what processes have to be running in the background, etc. This is so frustrating not to be able to hear voice channels at all...

I'd argue that for an environment such as this where text is king, a command-line walkthrough is considerably more newbie-friendly than subjectively describing GUI elements, especially given that there's not One True GUI Layout.

havent fiddled with anything, what needs to be fiddled with?

true, and since command line is independend from any GUI it's useful for a lot of more people ... i mean e17 is different from kde and kde is different from gnome and so on - bash is the same everywhere. Only downside is that some people will think every time someone gives you a bash command its necessary to warn about <read mail really fast>...

I coulnd't find any 32 bits compatibility gstreamer plugins rpms for opensuse x64, which made that I never managed to have video working here... Now, it seems I lost audio too with 1.22.8.

Are there any chances to have real 64 bits clients , not based on 32 bits compat ? this would be so nice !

I could try to cross compile the 32 bits gstreamer components needed, but its far beyond my knowledge... or change distro, but then I would have tons of tools to recompile here ...guess I'll live with music from outside SL for a while

EDIT - nvm, export LL_BAD_OPENAL_DRIVER=x made it

i still don't have any sound using 1.22.rc8 are there any tricks to get it working?

Did you have sound before 1.22.rc8? If so, then just go into the secondlife file and uncomment the "export LL_BAD_OPENAL_DRIVER=x" line, and make sure "export LL_BAD_FMOD_DRIVER=x" is commented.

If you've never had sound, then it could be a number of issues, none of them involving SL. You may be missing whatever mechanism fmod uses to pipe sound to your system (it may be Gstreamer, but not sure), or your system sound is misconfigured.

I assume you have working audio outside of SL. So if your distro is not using Pulseaudio, you may have to go back into the secondlife file and uncomment one or more of the lines to avoid using ESD, OSS, and/or ALSA until you find a combination that works.

sorry katheryne i ment to say my voice chat still doesnt work, im not sure what the problem is, but when i try to select the devices under prefrences only default is available, back in 1.21. i could see everything, and following your instructions on another site i managed to have it working one time, although i havent been able to replicate it since. im working off a fresh install of ubuntu intrepid ibex. so everythings default now.

Although this version seems to make sounds mix better, it has not fixed my lack of streaming music.

Sound works, voice works, streaming music and media does not. I installed esd-compat for PulseAudio and made sure gstreamer was installed. I'm using Fedora 10 and have yet to get streaming music to work under any conditions. Am I missing something?

If you are hand-installing Pulseaudio onto a distro that wasn't already Pulseaudio aware, you need to make sure you install and configure ALL of the files needed to ensure a smooth handshake between Pulseaudio and ALSA. Otherwise you'll end up in a situation where one doesn't know what the other is doing, an application (like OpenAL) tries to access ALSA directly, and all hell breaks loose.

(This is what bit Ubuntu Hardy users in the ass and gave Pulseaudio such a bad rap -- It wasn't entirely Pulseaudio's fault; it was Canonical that borked the configuration and left out a few pretty important files).

This guide should help you get a good, working Pulseaudio configuration, and may help fix the problem you're having: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup

(Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron users: Refer to this guide instead: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578 )

ok i dont know if this is pulseaudio doing it or SL but when trying out the latest RC build running voice with pulseaudio works great. for a while that is. after being logged in awhile a delay builds up in the mic input. meaning, at one point the delay was 6 seconds, i would speak into the mic and six seconds later it would register in SL and go out over voice. it only happens with the mic and not playback. after restarting my computer there was no delay for awhile and slowly the delay built up. after an hour it was about 1 second. anyone know what is causing this?

am running Ubuntu Intrepid with all updates installed and i use a logitech usb headset for voice.

Was this for me? Fedora 10 comes with PA installed off the bat so it REALLY shouldn't have this problem. On the other hand, I recently found out that Firefox happily steals ALSA from PA, AND keeps it until I close all the tabs that require sound.

I'm currently working with the Fedora people to see what is going on with my sound. I'll check out that article as well, and post any updates that may occur. Thanks!

EDIT: ..yuup, alsa-plugins-pulseaudio was missing from my system. It's supposed to be included in F10, so I must have done something at some point to remove it. I have no idea WHAT but oh well. Now my streaming works, and I'll be browsing the article more to see if it can fix my (system wide) horrible crackly sound. Thanks for your help!

well, after fudging around with pulse audio i had it working 70% for a few days, until i fixed it as per kathryne's links and it works very reliable now. streaming music althought it worked for me in previous releases, doesnt anymore, streaming movies doesnt work as well, though i havent tested them.

It occurs to me that you never indicated whether you were running 32-bit or 64-bit Ubuntu. From the sound of your problem, I'm guessing you're on 64-bit.

Streaming media (video) has never worked on 64-bit Linux. At best, videos would simply not play, and at worst, simply attempting to play one would segfault the viewer. The problem is GStreamer compatibility. Basically, the viewer, relying on 32-bit libraries, cannot make use of 64-bit GStreamer libraries, and ia32 libraries don't provide the needed compatibility.

Since RC8, all of SL's audio is now routed to GStreamer through OpenAL, so it doesn't surprise me at all that SL audio is now affected as well.

I would advise editing the secondlife file to uncomment the line about avoiding OpenAL, and ensure the line about avoiding fmod is left uncommented. The viewer's audio should then behave just like prior versions.

i won't be able to test it out for a while, but so far every bit of information has been useful if not only for second life then for my overall linux expericne, your right on account of 64 bit, im sorry for not mentioning it earlier. i'll try that as soon as i sit down at it again thanks again -chuckie.

SL Viewer 1.22.8 is the first SL viewer that I have come across that can be run under Mandriva 2009 Linux with only MINOR modifications...... no need to modify any text files, or do anything low level, here are the steps I used to get Voice running. Note: Im running KDE, however you should be able to do this under knome as well).

1) Installed the Sl Viewer (Extracting the archive into a folder of your choosing somewhere of your home directory works for me).

2) Mandriva has made much progress to get Pulse Audio working, however even though voice MAY run with it, in my experience the sound after only a few minutes will loop and the only way to regain any sort of non looping sound is to reboot ..... so you need to disable PULSE Audio. You do this by starting the "Configure Your Computer" icon on your toolbar - this opens the Mandriva Linux Control Center - click on the Hardware main group, then on SOUND CONFIGURATION. Unpick ENABLE PULSEAUDIO, and pick the ENABLE USER SWITCHING FOR AUDIO APPLICATIONS, then click the OK button. (Amendment – this step will work, however I have found another option which so far seems to work, keep PulseAudio active, as well as ENABLE USER SWITCHING FOR AUDIO APPLICATIONS, however make sure that AUTOMATIC ROUTING FROM ALSA TO PULSEAUDIO is UNTICKED/NOT pickED. )

3) Click on the SPEAKER/SOUND icon on the bottom right hand side of your toolbar. Click on the MIXER button. Make sure your microphone option is not muted. If you dont see a microphone option click SETTINGS and then CONFIGURE CHANNELS - pick the microphone here so it shows as an option in the main mixer panel. Once the mixer is right close it.

Then start SL. Before logging into SL go to EDIT - PREFERENCES and pick the VOICE CHAT tab. Ensure voice chat is active. Then click on the DEVICE SETTINGS button. Make sure that the Input Device (microphone) option is picked as OSS CAPTURE. You can adjust the import level here too, though the graph may flash on you. Close the VOICE CHAT DEVICE SETTINGS when done and click the OK button on the Preferences window.

OK, once done you should be able to logon and use voice!

Caveats: I have installed the following using Mandrivas INSTALL AND REMOVE SOFTWARE application in the MANDRIVA LINUX CONTROL CENTER from previous attempts to get voice working ..... they may, or may not be needed, I'm listing them here in case things aren't working for you.

* AOSS
* LIBALSA-oss0
* ALSA-PLUGINS-PULSE-CONFIG
* ALSA-UTILS
* LIBALSA-PLUGINS-PULSEAUDIO
* LIBALSA2
* PULSEAUDIO-ESOUND-COMPAT

Remember all of the above are easily installed using the software installer - no need to trawl websites etc.

I think thats basically it. I did reboot at least once while trying a combo that worked, so if things don't work at first, just reboot to make 100% sure.

Well I think thats it. I hope all the Mandriva 2009 Based SL users can have fun now. Maybe sometime in the future LL will get SL working nicely with Pulse Audio, but for now this will do fine

(Note: Steaming Audio is intermittent with this release of the SL viewer.)

Cheers

Photon.

I've finally nailed down the problem causing Pulseaudio to roll over and die. At first, it was only with voice enabled, but with RC8 and RC9, it happened regardless of whether voice was enabled or not.

The problem is OpenAL. Between it, and a bug between Pulseaudio and ALSA, there is a real resource issue. To see this in action, kill Pulseaudio, then restart it within a terminal window using the command 'pulseaudio -vvv'. Start SL, and watch your terminal scroll like crazy. Every few seconds, you'll see a message about having to "rewind" audio... But if scrolls up to fast to really catch it. Eventually, Pulseaudio will decide it's had enough and croak.

The latest versions of ALSA and Pulseaudio that will make it in the next Ubuntu release (9.04 Jaunty Jackelope) offer significant improvements in quality and robustness, but as noted here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/311853), OpenAL still causes problems.

I have managed to successfully update my ALSA drivers and Pulseaudio server on my Intrepid install to the Jaunty versions. After a considerable amount of tweaking to fix framedrop issues with canberra-gtk-play (the applet responsible for system sounds in Gnome) and HORRID audio quality in Second Life (which improved significantly when I disabled OpenAL and went back to fmod), I finally got it working perfectly. This link helped me with the tweaking:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1005668

Updating ALSA and Pulse the way I did is NOT something I recommend anyone do unless you are intimately familiar with the way Linux works (and even I was nearly on the verge of doing a reinstall to undo my update). It is better to wait until these updates are formally backported to Hardy and Intrepid.

However, I will make this note: With ALSA 1.0.18 and Pulseaudio 0.9.14, with the tweak to Pulseaudio's default.pa file to curb the buffer underrun problems OpenAL was causing, Pulseaudio no longer crashes. I ran SL for a good 10 hours earlier with no problems. Additionally, SLVoice did not consume as much CPU time as it did before. And, it may be a coincidence, but I noted my CPU ran about 10C cooler than before.

So, for those Ubuntu users having Pulseaudio issues with SL, upgrading to Jaunty may be very worthwhile.

I am now considering the SLVoice/Pulseaudio issue resolved.