Logo

Home About Community Download Documentation Planet


Release Notes

Just a little over 6 months after our last release, we're back with another one! While a little later than promised, this release contains a lot of awesome new features. Also, a big welcome to our 2 new committers, David Henningsson and Tanu Kaskinen (who squashed the last of the 2.0 blockers).

Key Features

  • Alternate sample rates
  • Jack detection
  • Echo cancellation: WebRTC canceller, automatic gain control, drift compensation
  • Virtual Surround module
  • Xen Paravirtualised audio sink
  • Fixed HURD support
  • A2DP decoder quality improvements

Packaging

  • The webrtc echo canceller depends on a new library: webrtc-audio-processing
  • The adrian canceller is optional and will likely be dropped in a future release
  • The Speex library is now optional (but highly recommended -- don't drop this unless you really know what you're doing)
  • Xen support has been added and will be of interest while building gest images

Features in more detail

Alternate sample rates

A lot of common (desktop) hardware supports multiple sample rates. Interesting, among these, are 44100 Hz and 48000 Hz, since all common sample rates can be expressed as a simple multiple of one of these, which implies cheaper resampling, when it is required. Previous versions of PulseAudio only supported opening the device at a single sample rate, requiring all streams that did not match this rate to be resampled. We now support switching the device's sample rate dynamically at run time, allowing us to avoid resampling, or reduce resampling overhead. This should result in CPU and power savings on hardware that supports such switching (most Intel HDA-based devices at least).

Jack detection

With PulseAudio 1.0, we added infrastructure to loosely support the concept of "ports", which are meant to be mapped to actual supported audio paths (read: physical outputs like your speaker or 3.5mm jack). These needed to be dealt with manually, and thus were not too interesting to users. With PulseAudio 2.0 and a recent Linux kernel (3.3.0 or higher), we now automatically detect whether a jack is plugged in to your device or not, and act accordingly. Currently, this buys us the ability to manage volumes for different outputs separately, and future work will allow more advanced features like easing the set up of multichannel output, etc.

VOIP improvements

The echo cancellation module got significant improvements with the addition of support for a new echo canceller based on the code from the WebRTC.org project. This canceller has a much shorter learning time, and is generally of higher quality than the previous default Speex canceller (which is still available). The module also uses the WebRTC.org code to add automatic gain control (AGC) which the microphone volume automatically adjust to the input sound level, and drift compensation to allow echo cancellation between different devices (such as speakers on your laptop and the microphone on your USB webcam).

Next Steps

While this release was delayed by ~1.5 months, we are continuing to work towards a shorter release schedule of 4 months in order to get new features out early and often. There will, be intermediate point releases for major fix and regressions (but that could never happen, right? ;)).

git shortlog

Alexander E. Patrakov (1):
      alsa: add DTS profile

Antti-Ville Jansson (1):
      stream: Fix upload samples' cleanup

Arun Raghavan (97):
      extended: Fix doxygen comment style typos
      sink,source: Avoid unnecessary call to pa_rtclock_now()
      alsa: Give compressed formats preference over PCM
      alsa: Better error handling in mixer rtpoll callback
      echo-cancel: Fail if loaded between a sink and its monitor
      alsa: Make mixer error handling more robust still
      echo-cancel: Add a standalone test program
      echo-cancel: Remove redundant variable
      echo-cancel: Don't crash if adjust_time = 0
      echo-cancel: Increase threshold for resyncing, make it configurable
      echo-cancel: Skip canceller when no source outputs are connected
      echo-cancel: Skip processing till there's enough data
      echo-cancel: Drop sink/source samples before processing begins
      namereg: Don't set default sink/source on get()
      echo-cancel: Close debug files on module unload
      echo-cancel: Don't process if sink is unconnected
      filter-apply: Move sink/source unlink callbacks before m-s-r
      build-sys: Drop libsamplerate from pulsecommon deps
      echo-cancel: Simplify checking if AEC is active
      macro: typedef pa_bool_t to bool instead of _Bool
      echo-cancel: Add the WebRTC echo canceller
      build-sys: Minor CXXFLAGS fix
      source: Bring rate update code in sync with sink code
      sink,source: Add the ability to disable alternat sample rate switching
      sink,source: Handle equal default and alternate sample rates
      alsa: Remove unused variable
      alsa: Probe sink/source sample rates
      sink,source: Account for corked streams in update_rate()
      native: Fix Solaris build
      solaris: Use real_volume for set/get volume
      gitignore: Update for recent additions
      doc: Correct intended roles property documentation
      core: Add a string list membership check function
      echo-cancel: Plug in WebRTC drift compensation
      echo-cancel: Adapt test code for drift compensation
      doc: Fix some old 0pointer.de references
      echo-cancel: Fix webrtc gain control initialisation
      cli: Add a dump-volumes command
      sink,source: Fix corked stream handling in update_rate()
      sink-input,source-output: Add an update_rate() function
      sink,source: Allow sample rate switching with corked streams
      sink,source: Update sample rate if possible on stream uncork
      echo-cancel: Add infrastructure for cancellers to do AGC
      echo-cancel: Hook up WebRTC analog gain control
      echo-cancel: Turn WebRTC analog gain control on by default
      echo-cancel: Make WebRTC the default canceller
      core: Make debugging a bit simpler
      tests: Add playback tests to check-daemon
      alsa: Minor debug code cleanup
      core: Look up /etc/machine-id if D-Bus machine-id is not found
      echo-cancel: Use speex by default if webrtc isn't available
      echo-cancel: Use more human-friendly descriptions
      filters: Fix the master source/sink when autoloaded
      filters: Allow a filter to have both sink and source
      proplist: Add internal API to get stream group
      filters: Handle echo-cancel streams better
      echo-cancel: Fix warning for undefined HAVE_WEBRTC
      build-sys: Fix building without NLS
      build-sys: Use absolute path for map-file while linking
      mime: Move assert to correct position
      iochannel: Handle missing un.h correctly
      utils: Fixes for building without NLS
      utils: Typo fixes in qpaeq
      resampler: Remove invalid channel asserts in peak and trivial
      resampler: Move some peak resampler asserts around
      protocol-native: Fix 'auth-group-enabled' modarg
      x11: Fix build without NLS support
      build-sys: Fix map-file check
      build-sys: Fix po/ build with --disable-nls
      build-sys: Make esound bits optional
      doc: Clarify pa_stream_get_latency() return value
      daemon: Fix *-idle-time arguments
      daemon: Drop --module-idle-time from docs
      orc: Trivial documentation typo fix
      orc: Another trivial documentation fix
      alsa-mixer: Turn off the IEC958 element for analog outputs
      stream: Clarify the sign of error return codes
      alsa-mixer: Fix mixer path for AC3 profiles
      format: Add "since 1.0" documentation tags where they were missing
      loopback: Trivial whitespace fix
      sink-input,source-output: Handle devices going away in unlink hooks
      pacmd: Fix compiler warning
      build: Fix out-of-tree build
      format: Export pa_format_info int and string property getters
      format: Don't assert on errors in getters
      format: Expose pa_format_info<->pa_sample_spec conversion functions
      format: Add more property getters
      format: Update map-file
      format: Trivial reorganisation
      format: Add API to query a property's type
      format: Allow format->sample spec conversion for compressed formats
      build-sys: Bump soname
      protocol-native: Reinstate assert that was incorrectly removed
      protocol-native: Remove redundant asserts
      stream: Fix sample spec initialisation for extended API
      bluetooth: Fix crash due to usage of pa_bool_t instead of dbus_bool_t
      build-sys: Bump soname

Colin Guthrie (20):
      libpulse: Always return a three part version number in API calls.
      build-sys: Provide a simple CMake Config setup (similar to pkgconfig)
      Update LICENSE.
      conf: Use .nofail when loading module-jackdbus-detect
      role-cork: Rename module-cork-music-on-phone to module-role-cork.
      role-cork: Make module-role-cork more generic.
      role-cork: Allow module-role-cork to act globally.
      pulsecore: Fix issue with circuilar definitions.
      x11: Drop unneeded 'struct' and use the typedef directly.
      device-port: Remove redundant include after the better circular dep fix.
      i18n: Fudge translations after previous commit to avoid mixing English/localized phrases.
      i18n: Do not translate strings that cannot have any sensible translations.
      i18n: Run make update-po
      cli: Ensure source output volumes are printed via cli interface (pacmd ls)
      bluetooth: Run update-sbc
      core-util: Attempt to make runtime paths smaller to avoid 108 char limit.
      Revert "resamplers: Optimize trivial resampler"
      man: Document the cli inteface a little.
      cli: Allow source-output volumes/mute to be set via CLI
      alsa: Add the DTS/DCA mapping to extra-hdmi.conf too.

Daniel Mack (2):
      osx: don't build the once-test binary on OS X
      osx: module_bonjour_publish needs to be linked against libprotocol-native.la

David Henningsson (46):
      module-jackdbus-detect: Avoid double-free of modargs
      source-output: Do not use unset channel map in pa_source_output_new
      Fix deferred volume not being applied if sink is closed
      Introduce "available" concept for ports, and communicate that to clients. Bump protocol version to 24.
      Turn device ports into reference counted objects
      Cards now has ports directly, and device port has list of profiles
      Notify port available status changes, and update protocol version
      cli: Show card ports and jack detection status
      alsa: Ignore the virtual "thinkpad-acpi" card
      alsa: add card ports and path probe cache
      Fixup a few things in the new path probing
      pactl: Show port availability
      device-port: Add a property list to ports.
      alsa-mixer: When selecting an input, turn off boosts of other inputs
      alsa-mixer: Refactor pa_alsa_profile_set_probe().
      alsa: Fix log message "synchronous volume" -> "deferred volume"
      alsa-mixer: Allow speaker port to control "Front Speaker"
      alsa: Improve "well known descriptions" for ports
      alsa-mixer: Make sure unsupported paths are removed after probing
      alsa-mixer: Take override-maps into account in subset elimination
      sample-util: Fix "Darth Vader" panning bug
      alsa-mixer: Don't use dangling pointers as port hashmap keys
      PROTOCOL: Fix documentation for version 22
      tunnel: fixup create_record_stream
      flist: Avoid the ABA problem
      alsa: Jack detection kcontrol implementation
      alsa: Add port information to HDMI profiles
      Add a new module switch-on-port-available that acts on port changes
      conf: Load switch-on-port-available module by default
      introspect: Expose port info per card to clients
      alsa-mixer: Make speaker get available=no when headphones are plugged in
      alsa-mixer: Don't remove paths if jacks state.(un)plugged differ
      daemon: Initialize dbus to use thread-safe mode by default
      protocol-native: Protect against clients trying to set a NULL port
      module-loopback: Never call adjust_rates after teardown
      module-switch-on-port-available: Do not switch profile if current port is available
      pactl: show availability information for "list cards"
      build-sys: padsp target should not be phony
      alsa-mixer: Show HDMI ports for older Nvidia cards
      alsa-mixer: Fix a small issue when detecting required-any
      Fix input device for M-audio fasttrack pro
      sink-input/source-output: Prevent filter sink/source cycles
      module-loopback: Reset process_msg callbacks in teardown
      alsa-sink/source: Really set volumes on port change
      alsa-sink/source: Make sure volumes are synchronised after fast user switching
      sink/source.h: Clarify set_port comment

Deng Zhenrong (1):
      fix compilation warning via PRI prefix

Dylan Reid (1):
      alsa: Set return code before printing it.

Frédéric Dalleau (9):
      bluetooth: Fix Media Endpoint for HandsfreeGateway
      bluetooth: Do not unload module-bluetooth-device on ERR or HUP
      bluetooth: Release MediaEnpoint if card profile is set to Off
      bluetooth: Set off profile on SCO disconnect
      bluetooth: Set hfgw profile when HandsfreeGateway is playing
      bluetooth: Use static string in DBUS signal handler description
      bluetooth: Remove match for org.bluez.MediaTransport.PropertyChanged
      loopback: Fix crash when moving sink-input fails
      loopback: Fix crash on error during init

Giorgos Boutsioukis (1):
      xen: Add Xen paravirtualized sink support.

Johan Hedberg (1):
      bluetooth: sbc: Reduce for-loop induced indentation in sbc_unpack_frame

Lars R. Damerow (3):
      alsa: support fixed latency range in alsa modules
      alsa: fixed latency range handling for udev-detect
      alsa: fixed_latency_range modarg for module-alsa-card

Lennart Poettering (1):
      systemd: complement module-console-kit with module-systemd-login

Luiz Augusto von Dentz (1):
      bluetooth: Fix calling many times Audio.GetProperties for the same device

Maarten Bosmans (32):
      Make pulse build with clang again
      doc: Add some more doxygen tags to existing comments
      Do something sensible when compiled without iconv support
      pacat: Fail early if the media name cannot be set
      tests: Fix calculation of memblock size in resampler-test
      qpaeq: Make it python3 and python2 compatible
      tests: refactor ipacl-test
      tests: Make sure tests assert on failures and return error status
      tests: More useful output of make check
      tests: Rename voltest to volume-test
      tests: Revisit which tests to run with make check
      tests: Add a target for running manual tests
      rtpoll: Update comment
      build-sys: Remove time-smoother and shm from libpulsecore
      Remove vector.h and vector-test
      Squash unused variable compiler warning
      oss: Use log2 function from core-util instead of own implementation
      Update LICENSE
      pulsecore: Hardcode FRAME_SIZE_MAX_ALLOW
      resamplers: Use fastpath assert in trivial resampler
      build-sys: Disable fastpath asserts by default
      resamplers: Use better variable name in trivial resampler
      resamplers: Optimize trivial resampler
      Use simple free function in pa_dynarray_free
      Use simple free function in pa_queue_free
      win32: Avoid some compiler warnings when cross-compiling for mingw32
      shm: Use a goto rather than early return for consistency.
      resamplers: Rework the peaks resampler
      resamplers: Improve performance of peaks resampler
      tests: Don't link tests that only use public api to libpulsecommon
      resampler: Some minor tweaks
      Remove pa_prioq priority queue implementation

Maarten Lankhorst (3):
      loopback: Fix crashes
      pulse: Fix old bug in stream_free
      module-jack-sink/source: Set fixed latency correctly on creation

Marc-André Lureau (1):
      stream-restore: Support a simple fallback volume table

Marcel Holtmann (1):
      bluetooth: audio: Update license for shared header files

Michael Biebl (2):
      build: Move libpulsecommon into $pkglib
      padsp: Move the padsp helper lib into a private library

Mikel Astiz (1):
      bluetooth: Fix property reply handling for hfgw

Niels Ole Salscheider (1):
      Add module-virtual-surround-sink.

Paul Menzel (3):
      svolume_{mmx, sse}, sconv_sse: Fix compilation errors with X32 toolchain
      doc: Add entry for correct spelling
      Correct spelling of PulseAudio

Peter Meerwald (45):
      echo-cancel: Fix memory leak in test program
      pstream: Fix spelling of 'receive'.
      stream: Fix comments
      def: Document that pa_buffer_attr.maxlength is in bytes.
      format: Fix unknown doxygen command \second
      format: Add periods to fix brief documentation for pa_format_info_is_pcm()
      format: Add description for format.h
      introspect: Fix unresolved doxygen link pa_port_available_t
      proplist: Add doxygen file description for proplist.h
      proplist: Fix typos in doxygen documentation
      utf8: Fix doxygen file description for utf8.h
      proplist: Consistently use parameter name p for a pa_proplist* in prototype
      error: Fix spelling of 'initialization' in errortab for PA_ERR_MODINITFAILED
      stream: Fix 'e g' as 'e.g.\ '
      simple: Fix typos in simple.h doxygen documentation
      mainloop: Fix typos and rewording of thread-mainloop.h doxygen documentation
      stream: Fix typos and formatting in stream.h doxygen documentation
      build-sys: Make speex library optional
      echo-cance: Make Adrian canceller optional
      echo-cancel: Set file mode to binary in test code
      echo-cancel: Begin log message with uppercase letter
      echo-cancel: Better handling of error conditions in test
      tests: Fix resampler-test compilation without NLS support
      core: fix potential memory leak
      core: sample_spec.rate is in Hz, not kHz; change logging output
      core: fix typo in logging
      core: comment typo
      alsa: Mention correct ALSA function in debug log
      core: Fix return of pa_cpu_init_arm()
      core: Fix log message about ARM feature detection
      sconv: Fix generation of floats in SSE test code
      pulse: Turn the anonymous error code enum into pa_error_code_t.
      pulse: Document general error handling.
      manpage: document --log-target=file:PATH
      manpage: document --log-meta, --log-time, log-backtrace
      fix the ever-popular 'the the' typo
      alsa: fix comment
      core: whitespace typo
      core: svolume tests should generate realistic random volume data
      dbus: Fix dbus argument type in iface-stream.c handle_move().
      build: Fix spelling in src/Makefile.am.
      echo-cancel: Upper/lowercase in comment.
      core: Fix comments.
      pulse: Clarify proplist doxygen documentation.
      pulse: Fix warning in introspect.h; minor rewording and punctuation.

Pierre-Louis Bossart (5):
      alsa: reset watermark to initial values on resume
      core: infrastructure for alternate sampling rate
      sink,source: support for rate update
      alsa: support for alternate sampling rate
      alsa: fix list of sampling rates

Pino Toscano (6):
      pipe: use pa_pipe_buf instead of the macro PIPE_BUF
      rtp: use the right type when checking cmsg_type
      module-rtp-recv: fail when SO_TIMESTAMP is not defined
      mutex: handle gracefully if a PTHREAD_PRIO_INHERIT protocol cannot be set
      pacmd: dynamically allocate ibuf and obuf
      libpulse: Cope with systems not implementing SA_NOCLDWAIT

Piotr Drąg (1):
      i18n: Update Polish translation

Siarhei Siamashka (1):
      bluetooth: sbc: overflow bugfix and audio decoding quality improvement

Sjoerd Simons (2):
      build: Force order of library installation
      .gitignore: Add padsp to gitignore

Sudarshan Bisht (1):
      null-sink: Set latency range at the time of initialization of module.

Tanu Kaskinen (43):
      sink: Move updating the requested latency after the rewind request when finishing a stream move.
      sink: Add some comments about the rewind handling during stream moves.
      memblockq: Improve debuggability by storing a name and a sample spec.
      doc: Add an example stream-restore fallback table file.
      daemon: Don't treat it as a fatal error if we can't connect to the session bus
      alsa: New modarg "paths_dir" for module-alsa-card
      alsa: Handle the "profile" modarg in module-alsa-card
      sink, source: Join two ifs with the same condition.
      device-port: Fix the circular dependency problem more cleanly.
      alsa-mixer: Remove unused pa_alsa_path_set_probe() declaration.
      dbus: New helper function: pa_dbus_get_error_message().
      bluetooth: When receiving D-Bus errors, print also the error message.
      dbus: Give NULL as the error parameter to dbus_bus_remove_match().
      bluetooth: Remove the right match in the proximity module.
      bluetooth: Change function name add_matches to update_matches.
      stream-restore: Clean up the database at startup.
      stream-restore: Don't verify entry validity needlessly.
      virtual-sink: Remove irrelevant comment.
      man: Document the local-server-type daemon.conf option.
      dbus: Use correct free function.
      flist: Make name non-const to avoid casting with pa_xfree().
      proplist: Constify the pa_proplist_copy and _update input pointers.
      proplist: Match pa_proplist_copy argument name between header and implementation.
      build-sys: Remove the public API stuff from libpulsecommon.
      i18n: Fix POTFILES.
      Revert "build-sys: Remove the public API stuff from libpulsecommon."
      bluetooth: Remove unused variable.
      dbus: Check method call signatures.
      dbus: Fix device latency querying.
      padsp: Fix a double-free bug.
      sample-util: Remove redundant check from pa_volume_memchunk.
      device-manager: Fix a memory leak.
      alsa: Fix SND_MIXER_SCHN_LAST related stuff.
      dbus: Add an assertion to get rid of a warning from Coverity.
      device-manager: Add an assertion to get rid of a warning from Coverity.
      dbus: Add assertions to get rid of warnings from Coverity.
      echo-cancel: Drop the correct amount of samples when skipping.
      echo-cancel: Fix memblockq length check.
      echo-cancel: Clarify function call contexts.
      resampler: Use pa_xnew0() to avoid manual zeroing.
      resampler: Use more descriptive buffer names.
      resampler: Add support for resamplers that consume less data than asked.
      alsa: Add support for sound cards with 4-channel input.

Yuri Chornoivan (1):
      Update Ukrainian translation.

poljar (1):
      pacmd: Added --help and --version options.