Those who know me realize that there is nothing I have not been able to do successfully with Ubuntu. 802.11n Wi-Fi, video editing, live webcam stream, MS Exchange access, POPFile server, the list goes on. But there is one area that like many of you, has been chapping my hide is trying to get a handle on using Skype with PulseAudio. As it turns out, as of 2.x, it’s actually REALLY easy. The last thing you need to do is uninstall PulseAudio. Because doing so blasts audio back into the dark ages in contrast to other OSes. Well, excluding JACK in select cases, of course.
Okay, so how in the world did I do it? Well I have a multitude of options available to me. And in the interest of full disclosure, I am still using Ubuntu 8.10 on my Skype box. I will be testing 9.04 later on a test box with Skype and Pulse. That said, it should work about the same regardless.
First of all, like with all Ubuntu releases using Pulse, install padevchooser. And make sure it is set to start up automatically from Sessions/startup programs. From there, decide right now which sound card you want as the default. Left click on the chooser, volume control off of that (not the regular one) and then Output Devices tab. Look for the downward arrow, select and check the box for that sound card. Most of you will be using speakers for playback, most likely.
In your Skype sound options, you will set the mic up as whatever you choose from that drop down menu. I chose my webcam mic, generally which will show up as USB device. Now here is the critical part – for “Sound Out,” I chose Pulse. The same for “Ringing.” Remember earlier when I selected my sound card from the Padevchooser? This means that I am able to not only have Skype working as it should with audio coming out of the speakers, but that I can still tie up the same sound card with music from something like Pandora. You will still hear Skype ring and you can hit pause on the music and take the call. You will not being doing this without PulseAudio. Trust me, I have tried.
Headsets, handsets and so on. One thing many of you are going to want is to be able to take the call on a headset, likely USB. Well, again, thanks to PulseAudio, you can switch the call to your headset… on the fly.
When setting up your mic above, do so with the USB mic being for your headset, not the webcam. Then leave your speakers as the default playback device in Padevchooser. To make this easier, you might want to leave the Padevchooser>Volume Control open and minimized.
Better and easier
Now clearly, that sucks. So I installed alltray and now have it set to start up attached next to the clock, with one click access. Saves time and allow me the same results. Just use alltray pavucontrol.
As a Skype call comes in ringing the speakers, I immediately hit my icon next to the clock for instant access to the volume. In the playback tab, I click the downward arrow next to the DBs and move the stream to the headset. Now I have my play through in a new device without doing anything real fancy.
Brainlessly simple
Let’s make it this easier. Get yourself a good soundcard jack supported VoIP handset. Mine for instance, has a plug where you plug in my PC speakers and then is plugged into my speaker port for my PC. It has a switch that sets it to play audio via my speakers. When Skype rings, I toggle a physical switch to phone mode – all audio it played through the hand set. Only thing different here with Skype, is setting the mic to be your regular sound card. In my case, NIVDIA CK8S. This eliminates the need for the extra work above. It’s what I use, along with my headset in some cases. This is really the best method for using Skype on Windows, Linux, and Mac in my honest opinion.
Update: As it turns out, you’ll want to use 8.10…well, in general. We can add this to a long list of bugs with 9.04 apparently. Not only does the mic not work, Skype cannot even work in 9.04 without crashing. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again – never rush out to upgrade. Glad I didn’t. 🙂 On my test box, I am installing pre-release updates to see if the problems have been resolved. I myself however, will not hold my breath and will likely wait until 9.10 or until 9.04 gets a handle on the latest crash-issues.
But hey, it’s not like the Microsoft crowd did not go through this with Vista?
Update to the update regarding Ubuntu 9.04: Tired of the problem, I installed gnome-alsamixer. Without so much as rebooting, even though it has heavy CPU usage, Skype is not crashing any longer. As for the audio not working, it turned out that the default mixer was not showing me that my mic was muted. Duh, Matt!
As far as I know, there is no good reason why gnome-alsamixer should have done anything. But perhaps it loaded another library that helped with the load Pulse was dealing with some how. Still doing further testing, but this is a definite positive! I tried for 10 minutes solid to crash Skype as well – it will not crash now! Go figure!
Final update: Took some doing as dmesg was telling me nothing, but I figured out exactly what was creating crashes on my PC with Skype and what to do about it in 9.04. In an upcoming article here at Linux Fanatics.
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