Many sound problems disappear with removing of Pulse, except for...

[Aleks]

My laptop is plagued with xruns...I mean like, sometimes it goes to thousands of them, chopping the sound. So today I tried to temporarily remove the pulse folder from etc. And - there are still xruns, but in a significantly smaller number, like, less then 10 in 5-10 minutes with Guitarix and Hydrogen and at most 20 when starting other apps, clicking around and what not. I feel like I'm getting there. Maybe if I find the right settings for Jack and of course, a better sound card, I would get quite decent results. I am using Ubuntu 16.04, because I like Unity. A lighter DE might be beneficial too, I guess, so I am considering a clean install of the upcoming 20.04 mini ISO with Unity in a low graphics mode - and no Pulse whatsoever. The only problem is, well - Skype and Viber, of course. Is there any way of making those too send sound to alsa, or should I outright install, like, a regular Ubuntu for my everyday use, and then another dedicated partition for music?

[bluebell]

Did you configure Pulse to output to jack (jack_sink)? Works fine here.

Another solution is suspending Pulseaudio while jack is running.

If you run clients that support neither jack nor ALSA then you're screwed when removing Pulse.

[khz]

Pulseaudio is connected very deeply in the system.
With a Gentoo (e. g. https://gentoostudio.org/) you can build your complete system without pulseaudio thanks to the (make.conf) USE flags and build programs like Firefox with ALSA.
Otherwise you can temporarily switch off pulseaudio - Stop Pulseaudio temporarily >> viewtopic.php?p=103154#p103154 - or use "jack_sink".
AVLinux would be worth a test, it is optimized for everyday use and LAW.
# AV Linux 2020.4.10 Released!! >> viewtopic.php?f=24&t=21284
# Thread for AV Linux 2020.4.10 Issues >> viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21286

<EDIT>

I am using Ubuntu 16.04

16.4 is very old, from the year 2016.

I am considering a clean install of the upcoming 20.04 mini ISO with Unity in a low graphics mode - and no Pulse whatsoever.

In any case use a current system.
</EDIT>

[Aleks]

I tried everything, but I still get xruns. I tried this solution too (the last post in the thread), it also worked for some other guy on another forum, but in my case results to no sound at all.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14759&p=66231#p66231

[turbidh20]

I run no DE here, just a WM (Compiz). I have never used Pulseaudio (Linux since 2006). Skype works great. I don't know what Viber is. I believe there are applications that insist on Pulse but I've never used them. I just see Pulse as an unnecessary complication.

[sysrqer]

I would look at other things before messing around with pulseaudio too much because, as you've found, unless you're running a dedicated audio production system you will run in to tedious inconveniences without it.

I've never had much of a problem with pulseaudio. When it is bridged everything works and it doesn't have much impact on performance for me. A lot of the information you will find on forums about music production and pulseaudio is fairly old and it is a very hot subject, or at least it used to be. The reality is these days is that, for most people, it can coexist with jack perfectly well.

What settings are you running jack with? And what is your hardware? Have you tried running the realtime scan?

A light DE can certainly help but your problem doesn't sound like it is caused by that. Most likely you are trying to use settings too ambitious for your hardware or something is not configured correctly.

[Aleks]

Well, this is the result of the scan

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Checking if you are root... no - good
Checking filesystem 'noatime' parameter... 4.15.0 kernel - good
(relatime is default since 2.6.30)
Checking CPU Governors... CPU 0: 'performance' CPU 1: 'performance' CPU 2: 'performance' CPU 3: 'performance'  - good
Checking swappiness... 10 - good
Checking for resource-intensive background processes... none found - good
Checking checking sysctl inotify max_user_watches... >= 524288 - good
Checking access to the high precision event timer... readable - good
Checking access to the real-time clock... readable - good
Checking whether you're in the 'audio' group... yes - good
Checking for multiple 'audio' groups... no - good
Checking the ability to prioritize processes with chrt... yes - good
Checking kernel support for high resolution timers... found - good
Kernel with Real-Time Preemption... 'threadirqs' kernel parameter - good
Checking if kernel system timer is high-resolution... found - good
Checking kernel support for tickless timer... found - good
== Other checks ==
Checking filesystem types... ok.
** Set $SOUND_CARD_IRQ to the IRQ of your soundcard to enable more checks.
   Find your sound card's IRQ by looking at '/proc/interrupts' and lspci.

Now, I guess it's the crappy usb sound card (usb guitar cable of sorts). A new one is in order, but until then, I am trying to make the best out of this one. These are my JACK settings.

[turbidh20]

I would look at other things before messing around with pulseaudio too much because, as you've found, unless you're running a dedicated audio production system you will run in to tedious inconveniences without it.

I would concur, if you're new to Linux or using a standard DE install, then try and sort it out in your normal environment first.

However, I will say I'm not running a dedicated audio production system and I've only recently adapted my system to running Jack as default instead of just ALSA and everything is fantastic. I merely installed Ardour and Mixbus

But then I never ran Pulse, so there was no transitioning from one sound server to another. I don't see the point in running concurrent sound servers, surely one's enough.

[Aleks]

I read that sometimes hyperthreading might be causing problems. But when I try to turn it off with

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echo off > /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control

I get this error, regardless if I enter it as a root or not:

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bash: /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control: Permission denied

Why is that so?

[turbidh20]

I read that sometimes hyperthreading might be causing problems. But when I try to turn it off with

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echo off > /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control

I get this error, regardless if I enter it as a root or not:

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bash: /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control: Permission denied

Why is that so?

It has to be done at as the root user. Try using sudo or a root terminal.

Edit: whoops, didn't read your post properly!

Use a root terminal, as sudo only assigns root privelages to the echo part of the command. Or switch to root user before issuing the command...

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su root

[Aleks]

Right! Thank you!