SageTV Linux with PulseAudio (Ubuntu users take note)

[tvierling]

Unfortunately, a whole lot of the .properties file options aren't well documented, or even documented at all (big HINT HINT! ), but I figured out how to get audio to work properly with the PulseAudio server that is the standard for modern GNOME, particularly for recent Ubuntu releases. Wrapping in "padsp" is not necessary.

Close SageTV(Placeshifter), then open $HOME/.sagetv/SageTV.properties (or SageTVPlaceshifter.properties) in your favorite text editor and add the following line:

audio_render=-ao alsa:device=pulse

Save the properties file, open SageTV, and voila, audio is now routed through PulseAudio and can be controlled via Pulse mixer applications.

A more generic solution, which works for me (but may or may not work for you), is to tell ALSA to use its system-wide configuration to route sound output:

audio_render=-ao alsa

(Note no ":device=XXX" at all in this option.) SageTV maintainers: I'd recommend that the default "-ao alsa:device=hw" be changed to "-ao alsa", allowing /etc/asound.conf to determine where sound goes by default. Forcing a specific alsa output module to be used is... well, a bit unexpected in modern Linux distributions.

[jchiso]

Thanks for this. It solved my problem, though I did not see this thread as originally posted, but was referred to it by another member in the Linux sub-forum. You should probably post this info there, as well ...

[bastafidli]

I have reported this problem with pulse audio to Sage as a bug a while ago. Great work on finding the solution. Did you posted it to Sage as a bug/resolution? They do not read every post in this forum.

[null_pointer_us]

Thank you for the fix!

It's been a while since I encountered problems like this.