The release of the sound server pulseaudio 17.0 has been announced. Pulseaudio acts as an intermediary between applications and various low-level sound subsystems, providing control over volume and mixing at the individual application level. It allows for the organization of sound input, mixing, and output with multiple channels or sound cards. Pulseaudio also supports the use of plugins and the transparent redirection of sound to other devices. The Pulseaudio code is distributed under the LGPL 2.1+ license and is supported by various operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Dragonflybsd, NetBSD, MacOS, and Windows.
The latest release of Pulseaudio, version 17.0, brings several improvements, although they are relatively slight. The development of the project has slowed down due to the community’s focus on the development of the Pipewire multimedia server, the sound sessions manager WirePlumber and related projects.
The key improvements in Pulseaudio 17.0 include:
- A method for reflecting the sound routing settings alsa ucm (use case manager) in Pulseaudio profiles. Instead of generating combined ports for non-conflicting devices, a single Pulseaudio profile is created. Additionally, different inputs and outputs are displayed as individual sources and receivers rather than separate ports within one source and receiver.
- Improved indication of battery charge for Bluetooth devices. Pulseaudio hosts can now be transferred to external Bluetooth devices, allowing for the display of charge levels on connected devices in systems like automotive information systems.
- Added support for the Faststream Bluetooth Codec, which enhances the quality of bi-directional sound.
- Updated WebRTC-Audio-Processing library to version 1.3, improving echo suppression and increasing sampling frequency drift.
- The Module-Role-Cork module now allows the use of role groups as triggers for muting and unmuting sound.
- When loading ALSA profiles, file routes