Update 2010-10-14 – This problem has been resolved since pulseaudio 1:0.9.22~0.9.21+stable-queue-32-g8478-0ubuntu14. You can now play AC3 audio with the Lucid packages.
Since upgrading my media PC to Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”, pulseaudio can’t play files with AC3 audio. Unfortunately this includes all of my ripped DVDs, which were encoded with AC3 pass-through audio. If I play such a file in Miro, the video hangs after a few seconds. If I play it in Totem, the same happens but a pop-up is also displayed: “pa_stream_writable_size() failed: Connection terminated”.
I fixed it by downgrading Pulseaudio to the karmic version. Here is how.
First, add the karmic repositories to your sources list. Create a file, /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-karmic.list, containing:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-security main restricted universe multiverse
Now downgrade pulseaudio to the specific version in karmic:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pulseaudio=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 libpulse0=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 pulseaudio-module-x11=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 pulseaudio-esound-compat=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 pulseaudio-module-bluetooth=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 pulseaudio-module-gconf=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 libpulse-mainloop-glib0=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 libpulse-browse0=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1 pulseaudio-utils=1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4.1
You may remove ubuntu-karmic.list after this, or disable it by renaming it to something not ending in “.list”.
Finally, tell dpkg not to upgrade again:
sudo dpkg --set-selections
Paste the following, followed by “Enter” and “Control-D”:
libpulse-browse0 hold libpulse-mainloop-glib0 hold libpulse0 hold pulseaudio hold pulseaudio-esound-compat hold pulseaudio-module-bluetooth hold pulseaudio-module-gconf hold pulseaudio-module-udev hold pulseaudio-module-x11 hold pulseaudio-utils hold
I haven’t get discovered if the Gnome package updater in lucid will honour the holds. Synaptic and apt-get will, but when I last tested (with jaunty), the Gnome updater blindly upgrades without regards to dpkg preferences. Lets hope some sanity has set in since then.
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Pass through digital audio didn’t work by default in Karmic — the sound effects in the OS would block Pulseaudio. It was a simple fix — turn off the sound effects. Sometimes XBMC blocks it as well and requires a restart of the application.
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