Debian Bug report logs - #505091
audacious: eats 5% CPU for doing nothing

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ralf Neubauer <ralf@strcmp.de>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: audacious: eats 5% CPU for doing nothing

Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:38:21 +0100

Package: audacious
Version: 1.5.1-4
Severity: normal


if paused, audacious (audio driver: pulseaudio) eats 5% of the CPU cycles of a
Duron 1200 for doing nothing. i have to kill -STOP or quit the program to get
the full CPU e.g. for watching TV without skipping. the only thing missing when
the program is kill -STOP-ped is the reaction to X expose events, so the 5% CPU
are completely wasted. Also audacious seems to take much more CPU for playing
audio than xmms did.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing-proposed-updates
  APT policy: (850, 'testing-proposed-updates'), (850, 'testing'), (800, 'stable'), (300, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=de_DE (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages audacious depends on:
ii  audacious-plugins             1.5.1-2    Base plugins for audacious
ii  dbus                          1.2.1-4    simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  gtk2-engines-pixbuf           2.12.11-4  Pixbuf-based theme for GTK+ 2.x
ii  libatk1.0-0                   1.22.0-1   The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libaudclient1                 1.5.1-4    audacious dbus remote control libr
ii  libaudid3tag1                 1.5.1-4    audacious id3 tag manipulation lib
ii  libc6                         2.7-15     GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2                     1.6.4-6.1  The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3                   1.2.1-4    simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2              0.76-1     simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libglib2.0-0                  2.16.6-1   The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgtk2.0-0                   2.12.11-4  The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libice6                       2:1.0.4-1  X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libmcs1                       0.7.1-1    Abstraction library to store confi
ii  libmowgli1                    0.6.1-1    a high performance development fra
ii  libpango1.0-0                 1.20.5-3   Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libsamplerate0                0.1.4-1    audio rate conversion library
ii  libsm6                        2:1.0.3-2  X11 Session Management library
ii  libx11-6                      2:1.1.5-2  X11 client-side library

Versions of packages audacious recommends:
ii  audacious-plugins-extra       1.5.1-2    Various extra plugins for audaciou
ii  unzip                         5.52-12    De-archiver for .zip files

audacious suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

Message #10 received at 505091@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: John Lindgren <john.lindgren@tds.net>

To: Ralf Neubauer <ralf@strcmp.de>

Cc: 505091@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: audacious: eats 5% CPU for doing nothing

Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:17:55 -0400

Have you tried using ALSA instead of PulseAudio?

John Lindgren

Message #15 received at 505091@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ralf Neubauer <ralf@strcmp.de>

To: John Lindgren <john.lindgren@tds.net>, 505091@bugs.debian.org

Cc: Ralf Neubauer <ralf@strcmp.de>

Subject: Re: audacious: eats 5% CPU for doing nothing

Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 18:14:52 +0200

On Thu, Aug 06, 2009 at 08:17:55PM -0400, John Lindgren wrote:
> Have you tried using ALSA instead of PulseAudio?

Yes of course, that's how I used audacious before I used packages with
PulseAudio backend. PulseAudio is not compatible with the ALSA dmix plugin, so
I had to change over every audio client from ALSA/dmix to PulseAudio. Please
don't tell me I have to stop using other programs or buy more sound cards.

PulseAudio is described as CPU and energy saving by the developer, so I'm
wondering what's happening here. If audacious is just sitting there -- not
playing audio -- it shouldn't use up any CPU resources.

Ralf Neubauer

-- 
00000000  72 61 6c 66 40 73 74 72 : 63 6d 70 2e 64 65 0a     ralf@strcmp.de. 

Message #20 received at 505091@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: John Lindgren <john.lindgren@tds.net>

To: Ralf Neubauer <ralf@strcmp.de>

Cc: 505091@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: audacious: eats 5% CPU for doing nothing

Date: Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:32:47 -0400

On Sun, 2009-08-09 at 18:14 +0200, Ralf Neubauer wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 06, 2009 at 08:17:55PM -0400, John Lindgren wrote:
> > Have you tried using ALSA instead of PulseAudio?
> 
> Yes of course, that's how I used audacious before I used packages with
> PulseAudio backend. PulseAudio is not compatible with the ALSA dmix plugin, so
> I had to change over every audio client from ALSA/dmix to PulseAudio. Please
> don't tell me I have to stop using other programs or buy more sound cards.

I'm not suggesting you stop using PulseAudio. I'm just trying to figure
out if this 5% CPU usage is specific to using PulseAudio output plugin
or if you see it with other output plugins as well. When trying to fix a
bug, it helps to narrow down under what conditions it happens.

> PulseAudio is described as CPU and energy saving by the developer, so I'm
> wondering what's happening here. If audacious is just sitting there -- not
> playing audio -- it shouldn't use up any CPU resources.

I've only used PulseAudio once, when I once decided to try Ubuntu, so
all I can say is that the combination of Ubuntu + Rhythmbox + PulseAudio
seemed much slower to me than the combination of Debian + Audacious +
ALSA (without dmix).

John Lindgren

Message #25 received at 505091@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: John Lindgren <john.lindgren@tds.net>

To: Ralf Neubauer <ralf@strcmp.de>

Cc: 505091@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: audacious: eats 5% CPU for doing nothing

Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:27:55 -0400

Ralf,

Please try using ALSA output instead of PulseAudio and report the
results in order to help debug this.

Thank you,
John Lindgren

Message #32 received at 505091-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: John Lindgren <john.lindgren@tds.net>

To: 505091-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: audacious: proxy parsing

Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:01:48 -0400

No response from reporter for many months, closing.

John Lindgren

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