PulseAudio
Version: 7.0 Web: http://bit.ly/PulseAudio7
For years, PulseAudio has been controversial project for many conservative users, but it’s getting more and more features that make it a better choice than the classic ALSA. After eleven years of development, PulseAudio is now at version 7.0 and it boasts several remarkable new features. The boldest of which is the LFE channel synthesis with low-pass filtering. LFE stands for Low-Frequency Effects (a Dolby term), which are now enabled by default in PulseAudio. It means that if you have a separate subwoofer and want to play a simple stereo file with only two channels, the PulseAudio server will filter out high frequencies for it. Previously, PulseAudio fed a subwoofer with the average of all input channels, regardless of frequencies.
Another big thing is the more flexible jack detection support when using ALSA’s UCM (Use Case Manager). When you plug a jack in for one device, PulseAudio now better understands whether it has to mute another device to prevent output doubling.
There are few more enhancements, such as better resamplers for high-end audio content, and PulseAudio is also doing a brilliant job of crafting a perfect sound for bit depth up to 32-bits, which is something for those who can mark apart different psychoacoustic models in a blind test. For the rest of humanity, PulseAudio remains a smart technology that can redirect sound output to any destination (including remote ones), manage input devices and even improve sound quality by eliminating echo and other defects. We’ve already covered some cool commands for the Pulseaudio 6.0 release [ seeHotPicks, p63, LXF197], and they still apply very well to the latest version.
PulseAudio7.0 will arrive in most Linux distros as a planned upgrade in the near future, so it’s best to be patient if it is not in your updates repository right now. Testing the latest code can be done by cloning it to your hard drive ( $ git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio ) and compiling. See the documentation that comes along with the code.
“PulseAudio server will filter out high frequencies for your subwoofer.”