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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <!-- -*-html-helper-*- -->
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>pulseaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />
</head>
<body>
<h1><a name="top">pulseaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></h1>
<p><i>Copyright 2004-2006 Lennart Poettering <@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@></i> and Pierre Ossman</p>
<ul class="toc">
<li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
<li><a href="#news">News</a></li>
<li><a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>
<li><a href="#status">Current Status</a></li>
<li><a href="#documentation">Documentation</a></li>
<li><a href="#requirements">Requirements</a></li>
<li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
<li><a href="#acks">Acknowledgements</a></li>
<li><a href="#download">Download</a></li>
<li><a href="#community">Community</a></li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="license">License</a></h2>
<p>This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
License, or (at your option) any later version.</p>
<p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.</p>
<p>You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.</p>
<h2><a name="news">News</a></h2>
<div class="news-date">Fri Jun 2 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.9.1.tar.gz">Version 0.9.1</a>
released; changes include: load modules even when libtool <tt>.la</tt>
files are missing; generate better ALSA device names from
<tt>module-detect</tt>; if an ALSA device doesn't support the
requested number of channels or the frequency, accept what ALSA
suggests instead; amd64 portability; drop <tt>.sh</tt> suffix of
<tt>esdcompat.sh</tt>; build system fixes; No API or ABI changes were made</p>
<div class="news-date">Fri May 26 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.9.0.tar.gz">Version 0.9.0</a>
released; changes include: new module <tt>module-volume-restore</tt>;
new OSS API emulation tool <tt>padsp</tt>; require valid UTF8 strings
everywhere; properly support ALSA channel maps for surround sound;
increase maximum number of channels per stream to 32; add new threaded
main loop API for synchronous programs; introduce real shared object
versioning; a few API additions; many, many bugfixes</p>
<div class="news-date">Fri Apr 28 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.8.1.tar.gz">Version 0.8.1</a>
released; changes include: support for specifying the channel map on
the command lines of <tt>paplay</tt> and <tt>pacat</tt> and as
arguments to the driver modules; ALSA hardware mixer compatibility;
fix linking; properly remove <tt>PF_UNIX</tt> sockets when unloading
protocol modules; fix sample cache; many other fixes</p>
<div class="news-date">Thu Apr 13 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.8.tar.gz">Version 0.8</a> released;
changes include: too many to count - consider reading <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pulseaudio-0.8.html">this blog entry</a> for more information; many, many minor fixes.</p>
<div class="news-date">Sun Nov 21 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.7.tar.gz">Version 0.7</a> released;
changes include: IPv6 support; PID file support; publish credentials
in X11 root window (<tt>module-x11-publish</tt>; new tool <tt>pacmd</tt>; ESOUND backend; new command <tt>load-sample-dir-lazy</tt>; many, many minor fixes.</p>
<div class="news-date">Thu Oct 28 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.6.tar.gz">Version 0.6</a> released;
changes include: TCP wrappers support; don't load the complete sound
file into memory when playing back using <tt>pa_play_file()</tt>;
autoload API change; don't load all sound files as FLOAT32; shorten
default buffers; client-side latency interpolation; add new user
volume metrics; add <tt>module-tunnel</tt>, <tt>module-null-sink</tt>,
<tt>module-match</tt> and new tool <tt>paplay</tt>; new API version
macros; many client API improvements; correctly lock cookie file
generation; correctly lock daemon autospawning; print daemon layout to
STDERR on SIGHUP; new options for <tt>pacat</tt>: allow sample type specification.</p>
<div class="news-date">Mon Sep 24 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.5.1.tar.gz">Version 0.5.1</a> released;
changes include: improve esound protocol compatibility; fix
autospawning via <tt>libesd</tt>; make use of POSIX capabilities;
allow <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling only for users in group
<tt>realtime</tt>; minor build system fix.</p>
<div class="news-date">Mon Sep 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.5.tar.gz">Version 0.5</a> released;
changes include: extensive API improvements, new module
<tt>module-combine</tt> for combining multiple sound cards into one,
gcc 2.95 compatibility, configuration files, add "lazy" samples,
support for source and network latency measurements, add
<tt>module-pipe-source</tt>, many other fixes and improvements.</p>
<div class="news-date">Wed Sep 8 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.4.tar.gz">Version 0.4</a> released;
changes include: daemon auto spawning, support for <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling, three new modules, proper logging, CPU load watchdog, many fixes.</p>
<div class="news-date">Fri Aug 27 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version 0.3</a> released;
changes include: support for both glib 2.0 and glib 1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense client library to LGPL.</p>
<div class="news-date">Fri Aug 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version 0.2</a> released;
changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.</p>
<div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
<h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
<p><tt>pulseaudio</tt> is a networked sound server for Linux and other
Unix like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
replacement for the <a
href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
<tt>pulseaudio</tt> has:</p>
<ul>
<li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with <tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
<li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
<li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
<li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
<li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
<li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
<li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
<li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
<li>Module autoloading</li>
<li>Very accurate latency measurement for playback and recording.</li>
<li>May be used to combine multiple sound cards to one (with sample rate adjustment)</li>
<li>Client side latency interpolation</li>
<li>Ability to fully synchronize multiple playback streams</li>
</ul>
<p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
integration with asynchronous applications using the
<tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
available through <tt>pulselib</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>pulselib-simple</tt>
available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
<p>The following modules are currently available:</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>module-oss</tt>: driver for <a href="http://www.opensound.com">Open Sound System</a> (OSS) audio sinks and sources.</li>
<li><tt>module-oss-mmap</tt>: same as above, but uses <tt>mmap()</tt> access to the audio buffer. Not as compatible bot more accurate in latency calculations</li>
<li><tt>module-alsa-sink</tt>, <tt>module-alsa-source</tt>: drivers for <a href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">Advanced Linux
Sound Architecture</a> (ALSA) sinks and sources</li>
<li><tt>module-solaris</tt>: drivers for Solaris audio sinks and sources</li>
<li><tt>module-waveout</tt>: drivers for Microsoft Windows audio sinks and sources</li>
<li><tt>module-pipe-sink</tt>, <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>: demonstration module providing UNIX FIFOs backed sinks/sources</li>
<li><tt>module-combine</tt>: combine multiple sinks into one, adjusting the sample rate if the their clocks deviate.</li>
<li><tt>module-sine</tt>: a sine generate sink input.</li>
<li><tt>module-x11-bell</tt>: play a sample from the sample cache on every X11 bell event.</li>
<li><tt>module-x11-publish</tt>: store Polypaudio credentials in the X11 root window.</li>
<li><tt>module-esound-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-esound-protocol-unix</tt>: <a href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">ESOUND</a> compatibility modules (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
<li><tt>module-native-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-native-protocol-unix</tt>: Native pulseaudio protocol (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
<li><tt>module-simple-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-simple-protocol-unix</tt>: Simplistic protocol for playback/capture for usage with tools like <tt>netcat</tt> (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
<li><tt>module-cli-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-cli-protocol-unix</tt>, <tt>module-cli</tt>: Expose pulseaudio's internals whith a simple command line interface. (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets resp. STDIN/STDOUT)</li>
<li><tt>module-http-protocol-tcp</tt>: Spawns a small HTTP server which can be used to introspect the Polypaudio server with a web browser.</li>
<li><tt>module-tunnel-sink</tt>, <tt>module-tunnel-source</tt>: make sinks/sources from other hosts available locally.</li>
<li><tt>module-match</tt>: adjust volume automatically for newly created playback streams based on a regular expression matching table.</li>
<li><tt>module-volume-restore</tt>: much like <tt>module-match</tt>, but create rules fully automatically based on the client name.</li>
<li><tt>module-null-sink</tt>: a clocked sink similar to <tt>/dev/null</tt>.</li>
<li><tt>module-esound-sink</tt>: a sink for forwarding audio data to an <a href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">ESOUND</a> server.</li>
<li><tt>module-detect</tt>: a module which automatically detects what sound hardware is available locally and which loads the required driver modules.</li>
<li><tt>module-lirc</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with infrared remote controls supported by LIRC.</li>
<li><tt>module-mmkbd-evdev</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with the special volume keys of a multimeda keyboard.</li>
<li><tt>module-zeroconf-publish</tt>: a module to publish local sources/sinks using mDNS zeroconf.</li>
<li><tt>module-rtp-send</tt>, <tt>module-rtp-recv</tt>: modules to implement RTP/SAP/SDP based audio streaming.</li>
<li><tt>module-jack-sink</tt>, <tt>module-jack-source</tt>: connect to a <a href="http://jackit.sourceforge.net/">JACK Audio Connection Kit</a> server. (A sound server for professional audio production)</li>
</ul>
<p>A GTK GUI manager application for pulseaudio is the <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">Polypaudio
Manager</a>. Other GTK GUI tool for Polypaudio are the <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter">Polypaudio Volume
Meter</a> and the <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavucontrol">Polypaudio Volume
Control</a> .</p>
<p>There are output plugins for <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-pulse/">XMMS</a>, <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-pulse/">libao</a>
(merged in <tt>libao</tt> SVN) and <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/gst-pulse/">gstreamer</a>
(merged in <tt>gstreamer-plugins</tt> CVS), <a
href="http://mplayerhq.hu">MPlayer</a> (merged in MPlayer CVS) and <a
href="http://xine.sf.net/">Xine</a> (merged in Xine CVS). Drivers for
<a href="http://www.portaudio.com/">PortAudio</a> will be released
shortly.</p>
<h2><a name="status">Current Status</a></h2>
<p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
<h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
<p>There is some preliminary documentation available: <a
href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
href="daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html</tt></a> and <a href="FAQ.html"><tt>FAQ.html</tt></a>.</p>
<p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/">Wiki for Polypaudio</a> available.</p>
<h3>First Steps</h3>
<p>Simply start the pulseaudio daemon with the argument <tt>-nC</tt></p>
<pre>pulseaudio -nC</pre>
<p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
<pre>Welcome to pulseaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
>>> </pre>
<p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
<tt>pulseaudio</tt> is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
command line :</p>
<pre>pulseaudio -nF pulseaudio.pa</pre>
<p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
<p>The best idea is to configure your daemon in <tt>/etc/pulseaudio/daemon.conf</tt> and <tt>/etc/pulseaudio/default.pa</tt> and to run pulseaudio without any arguments.</p>
<p><b>Beware!</b> Unless you pass the option <tt>--sysconfdir=/etc</tt> to
<tt>configure</tt>, the directory <tt>/etc/pulseaudio/</tt> is really
<tt>/usr/local/etc/pulseaudio/</tt>.</p>
<h3>Developing pulseaudio Clients</h3>
<p>You may browse the <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen</a> generated <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pulseaudio/doxygen/">programing
documentation</a> for the client API. (Run <tt>make doxygen</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)</p>
<h3>Developing pulseaudio Modules</h3>
<p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for pulseaudio:</p>
<ul>
<li>Extended device driver support</li>
<li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)</li>
<li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.</li>
<li>Hooking audio event sources directly into pulseaudio (similar to <tt>module-x11-bell</tt>)</li>
<li>For low latency applications such as VOIP: load the VOIP core directly into pulseaudio and have a slim GUI frontend to control it.</li>
</ul>
<p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
for pulseaudio. <i>Read the source, Luke!</i> If you are interested in
writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
questions.</p>
<h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
<p>Currently, <tt>pulseaudio</tt> is tested on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Microsoft Windows. It requires an OSS, ALSA, Win32 or Solaris compatible soundcard.</p>
<p><tt>pulseaudio</tt> was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
"testing" from November 2004, it should work on most other Linux
distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
management.</p>
<p><tt>pulseaudio</tt> needs <a
href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
<tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a>, <a
href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile</tt></a>, <a
href="http://liboil.freedesktop.org/wiki/"><tt>liboil</tt></a>.</p>
<p>Optionally it can make use of <tt>libwrap</tt>, <a
href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">alsa-lib</a>, <a
href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libasyncns/">libasyncns</a>,
<a href="http://www.lirc.org/">lirc</a>, <a href="http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/howl/">HOWL</a> (or preferably the compatibility layer included in its superior replacement <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">Avahi</a>) and <a
href="http://www.gtk.org/">GLIB</a>. (The latter is required for
building the GLIB main loop integration module only.)</p>
<h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
<p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
<tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
<tt>pulseaudio</tt>.</p>
<h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
<p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
<p>Jeff Waugh for creating Ubuntu packages (and hopefully soon Debian)</p>
<p>Miguel Freitas for writing a Polypaudio driver for Xine</p>
<p>Joe Marcus Clarke for porting Polypaudio to FreeBSD</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cendio.com">Cendio AB</a> for paying for Pierre's work on Polypaudio</p>
<p>Sebastien ESTIENNE for testing</p>
<p>Igor Zubkov for some portability patches</p>
<h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
<p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
<p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
<p>Get <tt>pulseaudio</tt>'s development sources from the <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">Subversion</a> <a href="svn://0pointer.de/pulseaudio">repository</a> (<a href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/?root=pulseaudio">viewcvs</a>): </p>
<pre>svn checkout svn://0pointer.de/pulseaudio/trunk pulseaudio</pre>
<h2><a name="community">Community</a></h2>
<p>If you want to be notified whenever I release a new version of this software use the subscription feature of <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/pulseaudio/">Freshmeat</a>.</p>
<p>There is a general discussion <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-discuss">mailing list for pulseaudio</a> available. In addition, you can subscribe to <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-commits">SVN changes</a> and <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-tickets">Trac Tickets</a>.</p>
<p>Polypaudio is being tracked at <a href="http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/pulseaudio">CIA</a>.</p>
<p>There's a chance to meet the Polypaudio developers on our <a href="irc://irc.freenode.org/pulseaudio">IRC channel #pulseaudio on irc.freenode.org</a>.</p>
<p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/">Wiki for Polypaudio</a> available.</p>
<p><b>Please report bugs to <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/newticket">our Trac ticket system</a>.</b></p>
<hr/>
<address class="grey">Lennart Poettering <@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@>, June 2006</address>
<div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
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