I did have a lot of problems with distorted audio on Linux games, but "killall -9 pulseaudio" before starting a game (forcing it to respawn) usually fixes it.
Hai! :D
> I was avoiding PulseAudio on my desktop, but it's feels necessary on a laptop, especially if you use Bluetooth.
You know, I was gonna say "But I had A2DP working JUST FINE with bluez-alsa, and JACK knows about anything that ALSA knows about!"... and then I started digging around and learned that bluez-alsa hasn't worked since BlueZ 4.x. :/ [0]
Guess I have another project in my queue. :P Hope I can get it in-tree without too much hassle.
[0] I guess that tells me how long it has been since I've paired a Bluetooth headset with my laptop! ;)
Good luck, i can't say i have my hopes up.
This Gentoo Linux user is getting along juuuuuust fine without systemd. :)
Edit: To bring it on-topic: It's a damn shame that PA -apparently- doesn't let you set playback/record device preference lists that let you specify which of the potentially many sound devices in your system should be used when some or many of them are unavailable. It seems that KDE4 and -IIRC- 5 use Phonon to add this on top of PulseAudio. (Or, actually, they add this on top of whatever sound playback system you're using... whether it is JACK, ALSA, PA, or something else. I've never written software that interacts with Phonon, but -from an end-user perspective- it's pretty great.)