Thanks for the reply!
In our case, the IO buffer is 500ms long, the IO period length is 20ms (for 16KHz Speex soud packets), and the application requests that playback start immediately (by setting the start_threshold software parameter very low).
Hmm, if you want ~20 ms of latency, why have a 500 ms long buffer in the first place?
It seems to be hardcoded into Flash Player, not under control of the Flash Player app, and Flash Player is closed source so I can't say why for sure (I'm merely observing what it does).
However, I imagine the intent is to be reslient against a wide variety of network conditions.
If audio arrives in uniformly spaced 20ms packets, then it should be rendered with only 20ms latency. But if there's a lot of network congestion and high jitter, several hundred ms could arrive at once. If Flash Player used a short buffer, these audio samples would get lost. By using a 500ms buffer, playback is smooth, with only as much latency as is necessitated by the network jitter.
So: short buffer, short latency request --> samples get lost if they arrive with high jitter
long buffer, long latency request --> long undesired latency
long buffer, short latency request --> smooth playback always, with short latency when possible, longer latency only when necessitated by high jitter
but this does not work: playback STARTS sooner, but when dropouts and underruns occur pulseaudio increases the latency to match the target buffer length.
Just a quick question: Are you saying there is an immediate change from 20 to 500 ms at the first underrun, or that things gradually adapts up to a stable level?
It's fairly immediate (within the first half-second, anyway).
It is necessary to lower the target buffer length too.
I think this part requires more investigation though. First, I'm assuming you are talking about underruns between the client and PulseAudio, rather than underruns between PulseAudio and the hardware.
I'm actually not entirely sure which is happening. But whichever one it is, pulseaudio very quickly adjusts things and pauses playback until the buffer fills up to its target length. Perhaps a pulseaudio developer could comment on whether that is indeed pulseaudio's intended behaviour.
Setting a tlength of 500 ms will have PulseAudio believe you intend to have latency in the range of 250 - 500 ms, so you're starting with the buffer almost empty, and if I understand it correctly, things continue that way? This is usually bad and a recipe for underruns. Anyway, this is probably why lowering the tlength works for your particular use case.
Yes, it does not seem to be right to set PulseAudio's tlength to 500ms just because ALSA's IO buffer is 500ms -- I think ALSA's IO buffer length corresponds better to PulseAudio's *maxlength* than to tlength. And the PulseAudio docs, though being a little ambiguous on the exact working of tlength and prebuf, do recommend setting prebuf to be the same as tlength.
Note though that I'm sceptic to the tlength part of the patch not mainly for philosophical reasons (hey, I want things to just work too!) but because I'm afraid it will fix some applications and break others. Emulating ALSA over PulseAudio is not easy due to the asynchronous nature of PulseAudio (among other things), and applications use and expect ALSA to do different things.
The patch will only affect applications which (a) Set an explicit start threshold requesting playback to begin before the buffer is filled, AND (b) Specify a low value for IO period
If an app specifically requests both an early playback start and a small IO period, then I think it's reasonable to honour that request and ask pulseaudio to maintain low latency.
Your comment, though, about "500 ms tlength means pulseaudio thinks you want a latency between 250ms and 500ms" -- if that really is the case, and tlength=n means pulseaudio thinks latency should be between n/2 and n, then perhaps it would be safer to only lower tlength to
2 * (larger of start threshold, IO period)
instead of 1 * (larger of start threshold, IO period) as in my patch.
- Philip
--------------------------------------------+------------------------------- Philip Spencer pspencer@fields.utoronto.ca | Director of Computing Services Room 336 (416)-348-9710 ext3036 | The Fields Institute for 222 College St, Toronto ON M5T 3J1 Canada | Research in Mathematical Sciences