1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <!-- -*-html-helper-*- -->
2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
6 <title>PulseAudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</title>
7 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />
11 <h1><a name="top">PulseAudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></h1>
13 <p><i>Copyright 2004-2006 Lennart Poettering <@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@></i> and Pierre Ossman</p>
16 <li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
17 <li><a href="#news">News</a></li>
18 <li><a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>
19 <li><a href="#status">Current Status</a></li>
20 <li><a href="#documentation">Documentation</a></li>
21 <li><a href="#requirements">Requirements</a></li>
22 <li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
23 <li><a href="#acks">Acknowledgements</a></li>
24 <li><a href="#download">Download</a></li>
25 <li><a href="#community">Community</a></li>
28 <h2><a name="license">License</a></h2>
30 <p>This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
31 modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
32 published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
33 License, or (at your option) any later version.</p>
35 <p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
36 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
37 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
38 Lesser General Public License for more details.</p>
40 <p>You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
41 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
42 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.</p>
44 <h2><a name="news">News</a></h2>
46 <div class="news-date">Fri Jun 2 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
47 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.9.1.tar.gz">Version 0.9.1</a>
48 released; changes include: load modules even when libtool <tt>.la</tt>
49 files are missing; generate better ALSA device names from
50 <tt>module-detect</tt>; if an ALSA device doesn't support the
51 requested number of channels or the frequency, accept what ALSA
52 suggests instead; amd64 portability; drop <tt>.sh</tt> suffix of
53 <tt>esdcompat.sh</tt>; build system fixes; No API or ABI changes were made</p>
55 <div class="news-date">Fri May 26 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
56 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.9.0.tar.gz">Version 0.9.0</a>
57 released; changes include: new module <tt>module-volume-restore</tt>;
58 new OSS API emulation tool <tt>padsp</tt>; require valid UTF8 strings
59 everywhere; properly support ALSA channel maps for surround sound;
60 increase maximum number of channels per stream to 32; add new threaded
61 main loop API for synchronous programs; introduce real shared object
62 versioning; a few API additions; many, many bugfixes</p>
64 <div class="news-date">Fri Apr 28 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
65 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.8.1.tar.gz">Version 0.8.1</a>
66 released; changes include: support for specifying the channel map on
67 the command lines of <tt>paplay</tt> and <tt>pacat</tt> and as
68 arguments to the driver modules; ALSA hardware mixer compatibility;
69 fix linking; properly remove <tt>PF_UNIX</tt> sockets when unloading
70 protocol modules; fix sample cache; many other fixes</p>
72 <div class="news-date">Thu Apr 13 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
73 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.8.tar.gz">Version 0.8</a> released;
74 changes include: too many to count - consider reading <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/polypaudio-0.8.html">this blog entry</a> for more information; many, many minor fixes.</p>
76 <div class="news-date">Sun Nov 21 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
77 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.7.tar.gz">Version 0.7</a> released;
78 changes include: IPv6 support; PID file support; publish credentials
79 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>
81 <div class="news-date">Thu Oct 28 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
82 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.6.tar.gz">Version 0.6</a> released;
83 changes include: TCP wrappers support; don't load the complete sound
84 file into memory when playing back using <tt>pa_play_file()</tt>;
85 autoload API change; don't load all sound files as FLOAT32; shorten
86 default buffers; client-side latency interpolation; add new user
87 volume metrics; add <tt>module-tunnel</tt>, <tt>module-null-sink</tt>,
88 <tt>module-match</tt> and new tool <tt>paplay</tt>; new API version
89 macros; many client API improvements; correctly lock cookie file
90 generation; correctly lock daemon autospawning; print daemon layout to
91 STDERR on SIGHUP; new options for <tt>pacat</tt>: allow sample type specification.</p>
93 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 24 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
94 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.1.tar.gz">Version 0.5.1</a> released;
95 changes include: improve esound protocol compatibility; fix
96 autospawning via <tt>libesd</tt>; make use of POSIX capabilities;
97 allow <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling only for users in group
98 <tt>realtime</tt>; minor build system fix.</p>
100 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
101 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.tar.gz">Version 0.5</a> released;
102 changes include: extensive API improvements, new module
103 <tt>module-combine</tt> for combining multiple sound cards into one,
104 gcc 2.95 compatibility, configuration files, add "lazy" samples,
105 support for source and network latency measurements, add
106 <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>, many other fixes and improvements.</p>
108 <div class="news-date">Wed Sep 8 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
109 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.4.tar.gz">Version 0.4</a> released;
110 changes include: daemon auto spawning, support for <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling, three new modules, proper logging, CPU load watchdog, many fixes.</p>
112 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 27 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
113 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version 0.3</a> released;
114 changes include: support for both glib 2.0 and glib 1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense client library to LGPL.</p>
116 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
117 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version 0.2</a> released;
118 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
119 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.</p>
121 <div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
122 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
124 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
126 <p>PulseAudio is a networked sound server for Linux and other
127 Unix like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
128 replacement for the <a
129 href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
130 Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
134 <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with <tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
135 <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
136 <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
137 <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
138 <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
139 <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
140 <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
141 <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
142 <li>Module autoloading</li>
143 <li>Very accurate latency measurement for playback and recording.</li>
144 <li>May be used to combine multiple sound cards to one (with sample rate adjustment)</li>
145 <li>Client side latency interpolation</li>
146 <li>Ability to fully synchronize multiple playback streams</li>
149 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
150 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
151 integration with asynchronous applications using the
152 <tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
153 available through <tt>libpulse</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
154 a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>libpulse-simple</tt>
155 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
157 <p>The following modules are currently available:</p>
160 <li><tt>module-oss</tt>: driver for <a href="http://www.opensound.com">Open Sound System</a> (OSS) audio sinks and sources.</li>
161 <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>
162 <li><tt>module-alsa-sink</tt>, <tt>module-alsa-source</tt>: drivers for <a href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">Advanced Linux
163 Sound Architecture</a> (ALSA) sinks and sources</li>
164 <li><tt>module-solaris</tt>: drivers for Solaris audio sinks and sources</li>
165 <li><tt>module-waveout</tt>: drivers for Microsoft Windows audio sinks and sources</li>
166 <li><tt>module-pipe-sink</tt>, <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>: demonstration module providing UNIX FIFOs backed sinks/sources</li>
167 <li><tt>module-combine</tt>: combine multiple sinks into one, adjusting the sample rate if the their clocks deviate.</li>
168 <li><tt>module-sine</tt>: a sine generate sink input.</li>
169 <li><tt>module-x11-bell</tt>: play a sample from the sample cache on every X11 bell event.</li>
170 <li><tt>module-x11-publish</tt>: store PulseAudio credentials in the X11 root window.</li>
171 <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>
172 <li><tt>module-native-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-native-protocol-unix</tt>: Native PulseAudio protocol (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
173 <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>
174 <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>
175 <li><tt>module-http-protocol-tcp</tt>: Spawns a small HTTP server which can be used to introspect the PulseAudio server with a web browser.</li>
176 <li><tt>module-tunnel-sink</tt>, <tt>module-tunnel-source</tt>: make sinks/sources from other hosts available locally.</li>
177 <li><tt>module-match</tt>: adjust volume automatically for newly created playback streams based on a regular expression matching table.</li>
178 <li><tt>module-volume-restore</tt>: much like <tt>module-match</tt>, but create rules fully automatically based on the client name.</li>
179 <li><tt>module-null-sink</tt>: a clocked sink similar to <tt>/dev/null</tt>.</li>
180 <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>
181 <li><tt>module-detect</tt>: a module which automatically detects what sound hardware is available locally and which loads the required driver modules.</li>
182 <li><tt>module-lirc</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with infrared remote controls supported by LIRC.</li>
183 <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>
184 <li><tt>module-zeroconf-publish</tt>: a module to publish local sources/sinks using mDNS zeroconf.</li>
185 <li><tt>module-rtp-send</tt>, <tt>module-rtp-recv</tt>: modules to implement RTP/SAP/SDP based audio streaming.</li>
186 <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>
189 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for PulseAudio is the <a
190 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">PulseAudio
191 Manager</a>. Other GTK GUI tool for PulseAudio are the <a
192 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter">PulseAudio Volume
194 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavucontrol">PulseAudio Volume
197 <p>There are output plugins for <a
198 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-pulse/">XMMS</a>, <a
199 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-pulse/">libao</a>
200 (merged in <tt>libao</tt> SVN) and <a
201 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/gst-pulse/">gstreamer</a>
202 (merged in <tt>gstreamer-plugins</tt> CVS), <a
203 href="http://mplayerhq.hu">MPlayer</a> (merged in MPlayer CVS) and <a
204 href="http://xine.sf.net/">Xine</a> (merged in Xine CVS). Drivers for
205 <a href="http://www.portaudio.com/">PortAudio</a> will be released
208 <p>PulseAudio was formerly known as Polypaudio.</p>
210 <h2><a name="status">Current Status</a></h2>
212 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
214 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
216 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available: <a
217 href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
218 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
219 href="daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html</tt></a> and <a href="FAQ.html"><tt>FAQ.html</tt></a>.</p>
221 <p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/">Wiki for PulseAudio</a> available.</p>
225 <p>Simply start the PulseAudio daemon with the argument <tt>-nC</tt></p>
227 <pre>pulseaudio -nC</pre>
229 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
231 <pre>Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information.
234 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
235 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
236 PulseAudio is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
239 <pre>pulseaudio -nF pulseaudio.pa</pre>
241 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
243 <p>The best idea is to configure your daemon in <tt>/etc/pulse/daemon.conf</tt> and <tt>/etc/pulse/default.pa</tt> and to run PulseAudio without any arguments.</p>
245 <p><b>Beware!</b> Unless you pass the option <tt>--sysconfdir=/etc</tt> to
246 <tt>configure</tt>, the directory <tt>/etc/pulse/</tt> is really
247 <tt>/usr/local/etc/pulse/</tt>.</p>
249 <h3>Developing PulseAudio Clients</h3>
251 <p>You may browse the <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen</a> generated <a
252 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pulseaudio/doxygen/">programing
253 documentation</a> for the client API. (Run <tt>make doxygen</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)</p>
255 <h3>Developing PulseAudio Modules</h3>
257 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for PulseAudio:</p>
260 <li>Extended device driver support</li>
261 <li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)</li>
262 <li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.</li>
263 <li>Hooking audio event sources directly into PulseAudio (similar to <tt>module-x11-bell</tt>)</li>
264 <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>
267 <p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
268 for PulseAudio. <i>Read the source, Luke!</i> If you are interested in
269 writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
272 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
274 <p>Currently, PulseAudio> is tested on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Microsoft Windows. It requires an OSS, ALSA, Win32 or Solaris compatible soundcard.</p>
276 <p>PulseAudio was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
277 "testing" from November 2004, it should work on most other Linux
278 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
279 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
282 <p>Pulseaudio needs <a
283 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
284 <tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a>, <a
285 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile</tt></a>, <a
286 href="http://liboil.freedesktop.org/wiki/"><tt>liboil</tt></a>.</p>
288 <p>Optionally it can make use of <tt>libwrap</tt>, <a
289 href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">alsa-lib</a>, <a
290 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libasyncns/">libasyncns</a>,
291 <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
292 href="http://www.gtk.org/">GLIB</a>. (The latter is required for
293 building the GLIB main loop integration module only.)</p>
295 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
297 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
298 <tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
299 the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
300 compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
303 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
305 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
307 <p>Jeff Waugh for creating Ubuntu packages (and hopefully soon Debian)</p>
309 <p>Miguel Freitas for writing a PulseAudio driver for Xine</p>
311 <p>Joe Marcus Clarke for porting PulseAudio to FreeBSD</p>
313 <p><a href="http://www.cendio.com">Cendio AB</a> for paying for Pierre's work on PulseAudio</p>
315 <p>Sebastien ESTIENNE for testing</p>
317 <p>Igor Zubkov for some portability patches</p>
319 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
321 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
323 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@pulseaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
325 <p>Get PulseAudio'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>
327 <pre>svn checkout svn://0pointer.de/pulseaudio/trunk pulseaudio</pre>
329 <h2><a name="community">Community</a></h2>
331 <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>
333 <p>There is a general discussion <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-discuss">mailing list for PulseAudio</a> available. In addition, you can subscribe to <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-commits">SVN changes</a> and <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-tickets">Trac Tickets</a>.</p>
335 <p>PulseAudio is being tracked at <a href="http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/polypaudio">CIA</a>.</p>
337 <p>There's a chance to meet the PulseAudio developers on our <a href="irc://irc.freenode.org/pulseaudio">IRC channel #pulseaudio on irc.freenode.org</a>.</p>
339 <p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/">Wiki for PulseAudio</a> available.</p>
341 <p><b>Please report bugs to <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/pulseaudio/newticket">our Trac ticket system</a>.</b></p>
344 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering <@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@>, June 2006</address>
345 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>