Re: Tragic State of FreeBSD Audio/Sound

Yeah,me too. I feel your frustration. That's also mine. Because I'm trying
to fix the audio distorsions coming from the 4 inches display that I want
to use in the FreeBSD based phone that I'm building. I'm working with
Claude and I'm spending a lot of tokens asking Fable 5 to fix the problems.
Report after report,it seems very hard to obtain a clean and robust sound.
I imagine how hard it is to do it without using advanced AI.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2026 at 11:55 AM <vester.thacker@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> I understand the frustration behind this report. Audio failures are
> difficult because the symptom is simple, a bad sound, while the cause can
> exist anywhere from the driver to the application. When the system provides
> no useful indication of where the failure occurred, debugging becomes
> guesswork.
>
> I have encountered this same class of problem while working on audio
> software. Awase started from the same motivation: I wanted an audio system
> that I could understand, control, and improve when something went wrong. It
> is intended to become a replacement for existing desktop audio stacks, but
> it is still in the early alpha stage. semasound handles audio processing
> and playback. audiofs handles audio asset access. The separation is
> deliberate because systems are easier to maintain when their
> responsibilities and failure boundaries are clear.
>
> This does not solve the specific FreeBSD regression you describe today. A
> new design still has to mature, gain users, and prove itself. However, it
> represents one possible response to the larger problem: when existing
> solutions become too difficult to debug or modify, building a simpler
> system can be a practical path forward.
>
> The immediate problem remains localization. The important question is not
> whether the fault is OSS or PulseAudio in isolation. The important question
> is where the failure first appears. The investigation should narrow the
> path. Test direct device output. Test through user-space layers. Compare
> players. Compare releases. Each result removes another possibility.
>
> The recording is valuable because it demonstrates that the failure exists.
> It gives developers something concrete to reproduce. The next step is to
> gather enough information to identify the responsible component.
>
> I do not know whether the cause is related to how many developers use
> FreeBSD as a desktop system. There may be several contributing factors,
> including how desktop issues are prioritized and who takes ownership of
> them. I do know that regressions on common hardware deserve attention. A
> ThinkPad T480 is not an unusual machine. A desktop operating system depends
> on predictable behavior after upgrades.
>
> The goal is not a system that never fails. That is unrealistic. The goal
> is a system where failures leave enough evidence that they can be
> understood and fixed.
>
> -vic
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2026, at 09:04, vermaden wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > For a start lets define some TERMS. I use UPPERCASE not to shout - but
> > to underline a part of the sentence that is needed to be underlined -
> > this is plain email - I do not have Bold/Underscore/Italic options -
> > keep that in mind - now - to the core of the issue ...
> >
> > I always considered FreeBSD OSS audio/sound subsystem superior to all
> > ALSA/PulseAudio/PipeWire and other dramas from the Linux world ... but
> > not anymore.
> >
> > Somewhere between 14.3-RELEASE and 14.4-RELEASE things begin to get
> > broken - I thought that upgrade to latest and greatest 15.1-RELEASE
> > would solve my issues - as there were LOTS of sound/audio related
> > things.
> >
> > I will not even start about PITA syntax of mixer(1) which went into this:
> >
> > % mixer -f ${DEV} vol.volume=+0.05
> >
> > ... from MUCH MORE friendly syntax.
> >
> > But these random 'boozing' sounds are just unacceptable ... and I can
> > not even tell where they came from ... is it OSS problem? Is is
> > PulseAudio problem? Something in between? Because there is NOTHING in
> > the logs for audio.
> >
> > Its also possible to get that file from my personal 'mediafire.com'
> > account here:
> > -
> >
> https://mediafire.com/file/jw3cpk8g77rvks2/freebsd-tragic-audio-sound.mp4/file
> >
> > ... and its not some fancy laptop from yesterday ... its a ThinkPad
> > T480 from 2018 for fuck sake - hardware like that used to run smooth as
> > Carlos Sainz 'smooth operator' in Singapore GP ... but not anymore.
> >
> > I do not even know what to add here ... its a message send our of
> > despair ... as newer releases only made these things worse ... I have
> > been repeating this over and over again - but its again probably the
> > issue that 'too less' FreeBSD developers use FreeBSD as their daily
> > driver/desktop/laptop system.
> >
> > Sorry to disappoint.
> >
> > Regards,
> > vermaden
>
>

-- 
Mario.