padsp

I’ve been running a java-based audio player for years and it works just fine on 11.2. When I run the exact same software on 11.3 it plays the first track of an album and then fails to play any subsequent track - with no apparent error message. It pretends to play it, advancing the progress bar correctly, but no sound is heard.

Having looked for explanations on the web I found a claim that java based programs (at least Sun java 1.6) do not work well with pulse audio. Does 11.3 use pulse audio as a default?

Assuming it does, the solution suggested was to run java via padsp. I am not sure that this is the problem in my case - but I am happy to give it a try. However, I can’t seem to find padsp anywhere. It is not available from the community repositories. Where can I get hold of it?

Thanks,

Abe

If you are a KDE user on openSUSE-11.3 then you are likely NOT using pulseaudio. Hence as an openSUSE-11.3 KDE user stop here as this post is NOT for you.

If you are a GNOME or an LXDE user on openSUSE-11.3 then you likely are using pulse audio.

Before I go further, I should also provide the qualification that I know nothing about padsp (PulseAudio OSS Wrapper) nor about the solution that you were recommended. Nor do I know the solution to your audio problem. There could be a good reason why padsp is not packaged for openSUSE and I have no insight into any aspects of that whether that is the case or not the case.

I did note this in the man page for padsp: padsp(1): PulseAudio OSS Wrapper - Linux man page where it is stated “Equivalent to using padsp is starting an application with $LD_PRELOAD set to libpulsedsp.so”

The library libpulsedsp.so comes with the rpm pulseaudio and it is normally located in /usr/lib on a 32-bit system, and presumeably /usr/lib64 on a 64 bit system ?

So one speculation is on a 32-bit system you could then run:


LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libpulsedsp.so <java-based_audio_player>

where you would need to substitute the name of your java-based audio player for <java-based_audio_player.

or in a 64-bit system:


LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libpulsedsp.so <java-based_audio_player>

where you would need to substitute the name of your java-based audio player for <java-based_audio_player.

No guarantees that the above will do anything helpful.

Sorry that I can’t help more.

Many thanks oldcpu.
I am using KDE but I did not stop reading your message at the second line:shame:

Clearly, then, pulse audio is not my problem, but thanks for the insight into how to do it. I think 11.4 uses pulse audio so sooner or later I will need to come to terms with it.

It appears that my the problem is within my own program, which plays each track in an album through a separate thread. Once a thread finishes it appears to lock the audio device and not allow the other threads to use it.

What is curious is that this does not cause any problem in 11.2 - somehow the audio device is released automatically and is made available to the next thread that wants to use it. So a different question - which I will put in a separate thread - is what is the difference between 11.2 and 11.3 in the locking of audio devices by applications.

Abe