As you have probably noticed, we have finally released an update for Linux in the form of a new beta - 2.1.0.47, which brings PulseAudio support for the first time.

You can download it from here, or wait until your distributions include it in their package repositories.

http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/choose/

We would like feedback in this thread from users who are now using Skype with PulseAudio for the first time, and whether it is working well, or you are having problems.

We have tried to support as many PulseAudio versions and configurations as possible.

Thanks,
Andrew.

I just tried the RPM on an up-to-date Fedora 11 x86_64 installation, and it seemed to work just fine.

Its so terrible, you messed up my pulseaudio. I use karmic latest build, and after removing old skype version and installing a new one (because of dependency problems) my audio completly stoped working. The button where i can adjust the volume, dissapears and starts again all the time, even if I dont start skype at boot. And pulseaudio uses uses 100% of cpu power. Ofcourse all sounds stoped working, no skype testing call no, nothing, not flash nothing. How to solve this? removing skype wont work i guess.

Strange. Skype is just an application accessing PulseAudio over the standard API, so I'm not sure how it could 'break' your PulseAudio setup in such a way.

It sounds like a bug with the PulseAudio installation on your system. Perhaps some other Ubunutu Karmic users can jump in here and provide some advice.

Andy.

Yes thats strange, and funny thing is, i just removed skype, restarted comp again and now sound is back on all other applications. BTW skype either didnt detect my webcam the last time. I will try something out.....

the sound works very well on ubuntu 9.04 amd64. although i had to manually select my webcam for sound input. but this is not skypes fault.

Good news for me.

Pulseaudio works a treat. I used the pavucontrol (Pulseaudio volume control) to switch the default input and output devices for Skype (via the neat right click functionality within pavucontrol).

The only thing I would say is that as pulseaudio sees Skype as only one application, the speaker for the conversation has to also be the device used to make the ringing tone (if I'm not mistaken?). If you were to separate (not sure how this is implemented) Skype into two application instances to pulseaudio, or send the ring tones through "system sounds", then you could separate the sound devices, one for listening to the phone call and one for the ring tone.

Correct me if I'm wrong though.

But with respect to the phone call, I've just tested from one 2.1 skype to another, and the sound quality was flawless.

thanks.

Ok i have investigated the problem with the new skype and karmic. To test skype i pluged in my usb webcam and pulse audio crashed. it seems to crash when i try to use audio-in. There is a bug entry on launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/p...dio/+bug/419359 its just one of examples, so i guess not a skype fault .

Linux Mint Gloria 64-bit

Kernel 2.6.30.5

Using my usb microphone headset i get no options in skype to change the sound input source. This is awful because i think the only solution is to disable the sound on my laptop to make it work....

Basically it doesn't work at all

@Benjamin29 now that Skype uses pulseaudio exclusively, I think you have to select the mic as an input source in pulseaudio, not in skype. Use pavucontrol or some other pulse app to do it.

I'm using the latest karmic and skype 2.1 works fine with pulseaudio (currently 0.9.16).

Worth to mention that at the beginning, there was no sound at all (neither in or out) for Skype, then it turns out that in pulseaudio's control panel skype's volume is somehow set to "zero". So if you don't have any sound with skype on karmic, keep an eye on the pulseaudio control interface (right click the volume icon on the system tray and select "Sound Preferences" and go to the "Applications" tab)

I use karmic 32-bit on lg s1 laptop.

After installation I tried a test call, and couldn't hear my voice. Trying again broke skype completely, and I couldn't hear incoming audio too. Moreover, skype would not shut down; I had to kill it manually.

My solution was as follows:
1. Kill pulseaudio.
2. restart pulseaudio.
3. start skype.
4. start pavucontrol. go to "Recording" tab.
5. start skype test call.
6. Now be quick! While the call goes on, in the "Recording" tab of pavucontrol -> "input from" field, choose "Internal Audio Analog Stereo" instead of "Monitor of Internal Audio Analog Stereo".
7. ...And from now on, Skype behaves.

I wonder if this can be fixed in the Skype package though... Can it hint pulseaudio and tell it what to listen to?

Simply does not work on Fedora 11 i686.

The only available device in Audio Device is PulseAudio Server Local. But it did not pass neither Sound Test nor Echo Sound Test.

Even worse, it would hang on the other PulseAudio client such as Rhythmbox

Here is my software and hardware information:
kernel: 2.6.29.6-217.2.16.fc11.i686.PAE
alsa-lib: 1.0.20.1.fc11
pulseaudio: 0.9.15.14.fc11

Asus F9Dc
Codec: Realtek ALC660-VD

For the skype v2.0.72, I have to toggle the audio option to hw:Nvidia:0 to get audio input and output, mono only but works.

Currently, I have to roll back to 2.0.72 to skype with my girl.

--------------------------------------------
THE SOLUTION BELOW DID NOT WORK AFTER FULLY TEST!!!!!!!

FAKE Solution :
Open a terminal and type the following:



then change the line:



to:



Next, change the line:



to:



Save and exit.

Logout and re-login.

Try the sound test and echo sound test with skype. It should work, at least for my case.

NO NEED to bother the other command line manipulation about PulseAudio. NO ADDITIONAL PulseAudio utilities are need.

Skype was working quite well under the previous version. However updating to the new beta version has caused a problem.

Video works fine
Initiating test call works fine
However, when my message comes back, it sounds like a very high speed buzz saw, (un-decoded digital audio).

I tried several changes in various menu settings, but nothing seems to clear up the voice return under the test call.

This is a great program and I am sure that the difficulty will be rectified... with a little help from my friends.

Ah ok! So in my case everything looks working however where I try to call a contact I can hear the ringing tone but when the phone call starts (I tried with skype test call) everything look working but no sound. Afterwards, meaning trying to make another call, there is not a single sound and skype can't be closed (only killing works).
In audio setup there is only pulseaudio selectable option. Using 64bit version.

EDIT: just noticed I'm on the wrong thread. Sorry!

Great, works perfectly. Thanks a lot

If you read the release notes and known issues, you'd notice it. Tell me if that fixes the problem for you.

Sound works as long as i don't make a call :-S

I start skype it sounds up. Calling for a test sound in the audio settings also sounds off normal and absolutly clear without any stutter or thelike.
When i make a test call. It still makes sounds for the riging and connection but as soon as the other end picks up sounds is gone. And even the sounds skype used to do don't work anymore. And skype is frozen and dead when i want to close it. I always have to kill the proces with "kill -9 skype" to get it to close a normal kil isn't good enough anymore.

I'm using a recent up to date installation of fedora 11 with pulse audio 0.9.15


EDIT:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I now investigated the whole thing. And installed the Pulse audio Device Chooser. And saw that the Default Sound server wasn't set at all. (I had a choise between default and other) i then set it to default and the problem was gone. I could make a call through pulse also without any problem. In the end it laged out some words.. could have been the internet though, dunno if that was pulses fault.

To anyone having the same problem as me:

Add remove Software -> install padevchooser

OR

open a console -> su -c 'yum install padevchooser'

Then start the Pulse audio device chooser and the applet will apear on the top left. Set Sound server to Default.



To anyone else having audio issues with fedora 11

Check out: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=225660

Most of all disabling sound schedueling made for me a world of a diference with pulse.

I installed the new version and am having trouble with the microphone. I am using a Plantronics USB headset. I used the volume control to set the default input and output to the USB headset. The output part is working fine but not the mic. I can record using the sound recorder without issues. The volume meter for the mic works fine. When I make the test call I can hear the lovely voice but not the playback of my voice. Taking a cue from one of the other posters I watched the pulse audio manager while I made a call. I could see the output opening up on the alsa_output.usb_device but the input was opening up on an analog device alsa_input.pci_10de(insert more junk here). The previous version worked pretty well other than needing to have the devices switched to get it working again (default -> usb headset and back again). Now all I have is the pulseaudio for options.

Any suggestions? I am tempted to reinstall the old version until this is straightened out.

Versions:
Ubuntu 2.6.24-24.59-generic
Skype 2.1.0.47

Works great! Thanks for the update. This has finally fixed all the audio problems that I had with skype.

Setup:

Fedora 11
Kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.16.fc11.x86_64

This may be a dumb question as I'm not too familiar with PulseAudio. I have one input device (USB headset) enabled, and that works fine. I also have two output devices enabled (speakers and USB headset) and have the speakers set as the default output, as that is the device I want to use for most applications. For Skype I want to set

Microphone = USB headset
Speakers = USB headset
Ringing = speakers

But there is only one choice available for all three, namely PulseAudio server (local), so I can't use the USB headset for Speakers. Is there any way in PulseAudio to change the default devices for specific applications? I do have pavucontrol installed but can't see any way to do this. With 2.0.0.72 all devices were listed explicitly in Skype so I could just pick the right ones.

P.S. Using Fedora 11 x86_64.

Never mind, I figured it out - I went to the Playback tab in pavucontrol and moved the stream to the USB headset while Skype was sending sound to the speakers. Not totally obvious since the Skype entry only appears when sound is playing.

I spoke too soon. Now I can't get sound out of the USB headset at all and had to move the stream back to the speakers. And there seems to be no way to make the Speakers and Ringing devices different, as the_wOndErEr57 mentioned, so even if I could get the USB headset to work as the Speakers device, that forces it to be the Ringing device as well.

Problem is, Skype streams currently all have type "voice", this will be fixed in the future version.



What does it mean "did not pass"?



If you change one comment to another comment it's still a comment and doesn't change anything for the pulseaudio server...

I'm using Skype Beta with 9.04 and the Sound works perfectly without any configuration from my side.

Making a test call, I now just get loud white noise played back from the mic on my USB webcam. I did have it working fine on Skype 2.0 after trying the different input devices in the options. Now it only has the PulseAudio server option available, even if I switch PulseAudio off completely in openSUSE's YaST sound module.

I'm running KDE 4.3 on openSUSE 11.1 and have my USB webcam set as the first device for 'Communications' in the Phonon multimedia preferences (Edit: under the Audio 'Capture' side only, not 'Output'). It would be a great shame if Skype 2.1 now insists upon PulseAudio as I need it for nothing else, and installing apps like pavucontrol or padevchooser wants to bring half of the GNOME desktop in with it in the dependencies.

Webcam is an IPEVO POV. The video doesn't work - I have no idea what driver it needs.

Works well on Fedora11 32bit

pulseaudio-0.9.15-14.fc11.i586
kernel-2.6.29.6-217.2.16.fc11.i686.PAE

not working on fedora 11 x64_86

video is running well, though making a test calls fails because there's a 'problem with audio' ! no problems with vlc, flash or rhythmbox

ugh....its...its just doesnt work...
could someone upload skype2.0 to rapidshare or somewhere else?
i'm just wanna make calls, not to fu*k with skype....

Well, if the sound test runs first, I could hear stereo sound from speaker(which is better than mono with 2.0.0.72) . But the echo sound test could not go further than the very beginning seconds of ring-tones. I could not hear the sound from the tester nor myself. When it was hanged down, the sound test would fail as well. What was worse, I have to "killall -9 skype" to quit the applications. Interestingly, it seemed not breaking the whole server. Simply restarting the skype can pull me into the same test failure again.

Oops, it is a REALLY server typing mistake. :-)

BTW: I noticed some of the zh_CN translation are missing. Any plan for the updating the translations? Perhaps I could do something with zh_CN.

Thanks a lot for this info! After the update, my microphone didn't work anymore. It is an external USB microphone. In Skype, only "pulseaudio server (local)" was available as microphone (in the previous version, I also saw options that referenced the USB mic directly). Setting the USB mic as the default input device in 'pavucontrol' didn't help either.

Only your guide helped. Thanks again!

Just wanted to show support for the great effort.
Works perfectly
Ubuntu 9.04 x86-64


did notice that custom pulse audio packages installed from various PPA seem to cause problems(just keep and eye on that)

sound is choppy (it sometimes even disappears for second/two) on openSUSE 11.1. it uses pulseaudio 0.9.14 and alsa 1.0.18 (i upgraded alsa to 1.0.20 though).
but this effect appears only when other application (amarok in my case) playing simultaneously.

Thanks so much, this is a wonderful update! Sound works great (Ubuntu 9.04 32-bit) AND finally my integrated digital mic on my Dell XPS 1330 works! Before, the volume was so low that I had to have my mouth practically at the webcam to have it pick up; I think picking up sound from pulse has perhaps fixed this.

One thing I noticed is that sometimes the audio can lag a little bit behind the video. I suspect however this will be fixed in Ubuntu 9.10 with a newer pulseaudio using rtkit, so probably nothing to do on your side. The caller I tested with said I sounded great by the way!

2.0 is still in the repositories (the yum repo, at least), so if you got Skype 2.0 from a repo, you can erase the Skype package and then install it again from the repo. If you enable your repo's cache, you can grab a copy of the 2.0 package file as well. (I have a copy of the 2.0 Fedora RPM saved just in case.)

By the way, I've complained many times about the fact that Skype doesn't make the existence of its yum repo known on its own site, and doesn't have a skype-release RPM to allow the trivial setting up of the repo, even though it's far simpler to do this than to update Skype itself. Why can't Skype do such a simple thing to make itself more user-friendly?

Edit: Also noticed that the 2.1 RPM is unsigned, unlike the 2.0 RPM in the yum repo. I hope this doesn't mean Skype is getting ready to abandon the repo. Anyone know?

I could not get this to work at all on my Ubuntu 9.04 machine. The pulse audio thing just ran me in circles.

When I installed this "beta" version, I thought that I would be able to go back to stable if there were problems. The site only has the beta download. I couldn't find an earlier stable version. That seems like a really bad idea. It forces people into beta trials.

For those with the same problem, here is an outside site with the stable version.
Medibuntu debian package.

It will go easier if you follow these 2 simple steps to add the repositories. That's what got me back up and running.

Tom

Hooray, I never thought the solution to my case is so simple, or brainless

Go to "Option"-"Sound Device", UNCHECK the box of "Allow Skype to automatically adjust my mixer levels". Press the Apple button and prepare for the sweet sound from Echo tester.

In the past, this option did not make any difference. So i thought this one was some legacy checkbox which happened to survive.

For the one who has the same problem, take a look at my screenshot.

Anyway, thanks for this great application. As I said before, I am quite willing to help with the zh_CN translation items.

Using Ubuntu 9.04

Sound does not work. I cannot hear my voice on the test call. My logitech webcam still gets the green screen. Very disappointing.

With 2.0 I had to jerry-rig it so I could use the webcam.
http://lglinux.blogspot.com/2008/10/skype-...-in-ubuntu.html

Now that fix doesn't work either. Looks like its going to be a long night...

The post from pruefsum solved my playback issue. Now for the green screen......

Running Ubuntu 9.10 and Skype calls with PA do work (incl mic) but they stop after a few minutes for absolutely no obvious reason (just as if your partner would've hung up)...

Acer Aspire One D250
Fedora 11 latest kernel xxx.xxx.217.16
Skype 2.1 latest version

Device for input and output etc only "PulseAudio Server).

Unstabile. Crashes. Sound choky. Can hear calling out sounds but then almost nothing goes through. Blocks other pulse audio software. Takes more than 90% of the cpu resource!

Impossible to find the old skype version to rollback. Why did you remove the stable version from the site before you have a decent beta?

----------------------

Acer Aspire One 150
Fedora 10, kernel 2.6.27.25-170.2.72.fc10.i686
Skype 2.1 latest version

Device for input and output etc only "PulseAudio Server).

Unstabile. Crashes. Sound choky. Can hear calling out sounds but then almost nothing goes through. Blocks other pulse audio software. Takes more than 90% of the cpu resource!

Even worse than for Fedora 11!!!!

Impossible to find the old skype version to rollback. Why did you remove the stable version from the site before you have a decent beta?

----------

When do you have a fix for these serious problems?

Yes, I can also confirm the problem with the ringing sound. I have installed the latest beta on Mandriva 2009.1 (please, provide a native RPM package!) and while it works just fine with PulseAudio, the ringing sound goes to whichever device Skype is told to use in pavucontrol. That is not good - I am using headset and ringing is hard to hear when I am not wearing it.

Please, allow choosing a different device for the service sounds.

Regards,

Jan

One more thing - I had some bad crashes at first when trying to make calls using Skype with PulseAudio. Removing ~/.pulse and ~/.pulse-cookie and restarting PulseAudio server (killing it should be enough) has fixed all problems for me.

After following these instructions I am still having a problem.
Skype now does not crash (or does not always crash) pulseaudio.
When trying a test call I can hear not only the ring sounds but also the voice on the other end (at least sometimes). However, mic still does not work.

Sometimes, the sound disappears altogether and I see that the output of pulse is set to "Null Output" and pulse does not see my "Internal Audio"

As far as mic goes, I followed instructions with a little modification -- I set the input from field to my usb device (webcam) rather than "Internal Audio Analog Stereo" as I do not have mic connected to the sound card. Maybe this is important. However, webcam sound input does work in the absence of pulseaudio.

Any suggestions?

Running ubuntu karmic (pulseaudio package 0.9.16~test6-3-g57e1-0ubuntu2) - if I select "Allow skype to adjust volume levels" pulseaudio crashes once my test echo call connects (ie. I hear dialtone then as soon as connection occurs, pulseaudio crashes and then all I get is silence) with backtrace:

Program received signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
0x00007f678e3fd4b5 in raise () from /lib/libc.so.6
(gdb) bt
#0 0x00007f678e3fd4b5 in raise () from /lib/libc.so.6
#1 0x00007f678e400f50 in abort () from /lib/libc.so.6
#2 0x00007f67900f1cf5 in pa_source_set_volume ()
from /usr/lib/libpulsecore-0.9.16.so
#3 0x00007f6786f828b4 in ?? ()
from /usr/lib/pulse-0.9.16/modules/libprotocol-native.so
#4 0x00007f678fe74766 in pa_pdispatch_run ()
from /usr/lib/libpulsecommon-0.9.16.so
#5 0x00007f6786f7f1a9 in ?? ()
from /usr/lib/pulse-0.9.16/modules/libprotocol-native.so
#6 0x00007f678fe78ed4 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libpulsecommon-0.9.16.so
#7 0x00007f678fc2c593 in pa_mainloop_dispatch () from /usr/lib/libpulse.so.0
#8 0x00007f678fc2c9c8 in pa_mainloop_iterate () from /usr/lib/libpulse.so.0
#9 0x00007f678fc2ca70 in pa_mainloop_run () from /usr/lib/libpulse.so.0
#10 0x000000000040a070 in main ()


However, if I uncheck this option, the call to the echo test connects successfully and I can hear everything nice and clearly.

Hi, I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 here, with PulseAudio 0.9.14. I just installed the 2.1 and here's what happened:

at the first lauch I checked the audio config (it was just pulseaudio on evry line) and it worked without any flaw.

After that I wanted to check the CPU usage, so I called once more the Skype Testing Service. It was a big surprise to hear a loud noise instead of my voice being played back. I went on the system's audio setting to check if something had gone wrong there, and simply pushing the test button for the audioconference setting started playing the same horrible noise again.

After a reset I went again on the system's audio setting, pushed the test button and my voice was played trough the headphones nicely, so I resterded Skype again to check another time... Noise again... I still can't understand why the first time it worked. maybe something is wrong with my pulseaudio, I don't really know.

However I use Skype every day, so I had to go back quickly to the 2.0 release, because the 2.1 didn't allow me to change the audio device settings (it just stayes fixed on pulseaudio option) and I had to restore a working solution very quick.

If there's some test you would like to suggest I will try as soon as possible.

Regards

Works nicely... finally.. THANKS!!!

Inspiron 1525
Ubuntu karmic (development
HDA-Intel - HDA Intel.
Linux 2.6.31-8-generic (i686)
PulseAudio 1:0.9.16~test6~

work fine,some time it crash to pulseaudio, but it's normal(happend with other app.) becouse pulse it's unstable, sound work and also calls.

I did this,... better than nothing.

Options > Notifications > Incoming Call Ringing::Advanced View::Execute the following script:

playwave /usr/share/skype/sounds/CallRingingIn.wav

Thanks!! This worked for me as well.

Ubuntu 9.04 amd64.. was using the prev. version of skype which used to give up on audio after a resume from hibernate. Hopefully this one will work better after resume.

I have an Acer aspire one running Ubuntu 9.04 UNR and the sound is unusable on Skype 2.1. It is really stuttery and drops in and out. Does anyone know where I can get a deb of the 2.0 release?