Manpages

NAME

pulse-daemon.conf - PulseAudio daemon configuration file

SYNOPSIS

~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf

~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf.d/*.conf

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf.d/*.conf

DESCRIPTION

The PulseAudio sound server reads configuration directives from a configuration file on startup. If the per-user file ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf exists, it is used, otherwise the system configuration file /etc/pulse/daemon.conf is used. In addition to those main files, configuration directives can also be put in files under directories ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf.d/ and /etc/pulse/daemon.conf.d/. Those files have to have the .conf file name extension, but otherwise the file names can be chosen freely. The files under daemon.conf.d are processed in alphabetical order. In case the same option is set in multiple files, the last file to set an option overrides earlier files. The main daemon.conf file is processed first, so options set in files under daemon.conf.d override the main file.

Please note that the server also reads a configuration script on startup. See default.pa(5).

The configuration file is a simple collection of variable declarations. If the configuration file parser encounters either ; or # it ignores the rest of the line until its end.

For the settings that take a boolean argument the values true, yes, on and 1 are equivalent, resp. false, no, off, 0.

GENERAL DIRECTIVES

daemonize= Daemonize after startup. Takes a boolean value, defaults to
no. The --daemonize command line option takes precedence.
fail= Fail to start up if any of the directives in the configuration
script default.pa fail. Takes a boolean argument, defaults to yes. The
--fail command line option takes precedence.
allow-module-loading= Allow/disallow module loading after startup. This
is a security feature that if disabled makes sure that no further
modules may be loaded into the PulseAudio server after startup
completed. It is recommended to disable this when system-instance is
enabled. Please note that certain features like automatic hot-plug
support will not work if this option is enabled. Takes a boolean
argument, defaults to yes. The --disallow-module-loading command line
option takes precedence.
allow-exit= Allow/disallow exit on user request. Defaults to yes.
resample-method= The resampling algorithm to use. Use one of
src-sinc-best-quality, src-sinc-medium-quality, src-sinc-fastest,
src-zero-order-hold, src-linear, trivial, speex-float-N, speex-fixed-N,
ffmpeg, soxr-mq, soxr-hq, soxr-vhq. See the documentation of
libsamplerate and speex for explanations of the different src- and
speex- methods, respectively. The method trivial is the most basic
algorithm implemented. If you’re tight on CPU consider using this. On
the other hand it has the worst quality of them all. The Speex
resamplers take an integer quality setting in the range 0..10
(bad...good). They exist in two flavours: fixed and float. The former
uses fixed point numbers, the latter relies on floating point numbers.
On most desktop CPUs the float point resampler is a lot faster, and it
also offers slightly better quality. The soxr-family methods are based
on libsoxr, a resampler library from the SoX sound processing utility.
The mq variant has the best performance of the three. The hq is more
expensive and, according to SoX developers, is considered the best
choice for audio of up to 16 bits per sample. The vhq variant has more
precision than hq and is more suitable for larger samples. The Soxr
resamplers generally offer better quality at less CPU compared to other
resamplers, such as speex. The downside is that they can add a
significant delay to the output (usually up to around 20 ms, in rare
cases more). See the output of dump-resample-methods for a complete
list of all available resamplers. Defaults to speex-float-1. The
--resample-method command line option takes precedence. Note that some
modules overwrite or allow overwriting of the resampler to use.
avoid-resampling= If set, try to configure the device to avoid
resampling. This only works on devices which support reconfiguring
their rate, and when no other streams are already playing or capturing
audio. The device will also not be configured to a rate less than the
default and alternate sample rates.
enable-remixing= If disabled never upmix or downmix channels to
different channel maps. Instead, do a simple name-based matching only.
Defaults to yes. There is no known valid use case for setting this
option to no, therefore, this option is deprecated and may be removed
in a future version of PulseAudio.
remixing-use-all-sink-channels= If enabled, use all sink channels when
remixing. Otherwise, remix to the minimal set of sink channels needed
to reproduce all of the source channels. (This has no effect on LFE
remixing.) Defaults to yes.
enable-lfe-remixing= This is a way to set remixing-produce-lfe and
remixing-consume-lfe to the same value at once. This option only exists
for backward compatibility and may be removed in a future version of
PulseAudio.
remixing-produce-lfe= If enabled, and the sink input does not have the
LFE channel, synthesize the output LFE channel as a (lowpass-filtered,
if lfe-crossover-freq is not 0) average of all input channels. Also,
when lfe-crossover-freq is not 0, filter out low frequencies from other
channels while producing a synthetic LFE output. If disabled, the
output LFE channel will only get a signal when an input LFE channel is
available as well. Defaults to no.
remixing-consume-lfe= If enabled, and the sink does not have an LFE
channel, redirect the input LFE channel (if any) to other channels. If
disabled, the input LFE channel will remain unused unless the sink has
the LFE channel as well. Defaults to no.
lfe-crossover-freq= The crossover frequency (in Hz) for the LFE filter.
Set it to 0 to disable the LFE filter. Defaults to 0.
use-pid-file= Create a PID file in the runtime directory
($XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/pulse/pid). If this is enabled you may use commands
like --kill or --check. If you are planning to start more than one
PulseAudio process per user, you better disable this option since it
effectively disables multiple instances. Takes a boolean argument,
defaults to yes. The --use-pid-file command line option takes
precedence.
cpu-limit= If disabled do not install the CPU load limiter, even on
platforms where it is supported. This option is useful when
debugging/profiling PulseAudio to disable disturbing SIGXCPU signals.
Takes a boolean argument, defaults to no. The --no-cpu-limit command
line argument takes precedence.
system-instance= Run the daemon as system-wide instance, requires root
privileges. Takes a boolean argument, defaults to no. The --system
command line argument takes precedence.
local-server-type= Please don’t use this option if you don’t have to!
This option is currently only useful when you want D-Bus clients to use
a remote server. This option may be removed in future versions. If you
only want to run PulseAudio in the system mode, use the system-instance
option. This option takes one of user, system or none as the argument.
This is essentially a duplicate for the system-instance option. The
difference is the none option, which is useful when you want to use a
remote server with D-Bus clients. If both this and system-instance are
defined, this option takes precedence. Defaults to whatever the
system-instance is set.
enable-shm= Enable data transfer via POSIX or memfd shared memory.
Takes a boolean argument, defaults to yes. The --disable-shm command
line argument takes precedence.
enable-memfd=. Enable memfd shared memory. Takes a boolean argument,
defaults to yes.
shm-size-bytes= Sets the shared memory segment size for the daemon, in
bytes. If left unspecified or is set to 0 it will default to some
system-specific default, usually 64 MiB. Please note that usually there
is no need to change this value, unless you are running an OS kernel
that does not do memory overcommit.
lock-memory= Locks the entire PulseAudio process into memory. While
this might increase drop-out safety when used in conjunction with
real-time scheduling this takes away a lot of memory from other
processes and might hence considerably slow down your system. Defaults
to no.
flat-volumes= Enable ’flat’ volumes, i.e. where possible let the sink
volume equal the maximum of the volumes of the inputs connected to it.
Takes a boolean argument, defaults to no.
rescue-streams= Enable rescuing of streams if the used sink or source
becomes unavailable. Takes a boolean argument. If set to yes,
pulseaudio will try to move the streams from a sink or source that
becomes unavailable to the default sink or source. If set to no,
streams will be killed if the corresponding sink or source disappears.
Defaults to yes.

SCHEDULING

high-priority= Renice the daemon after startup to become a
high-priority process. This a good idea if you experience drop-outs
during playback. However, this is a certain security issue, since it
works when called SUID root only, or RLIMIT_NICE is used. root is
dropped immediately after gaining the nice level on startup, thus it is
presumably safe. See pulseaudio(1) for more information. Takes a
boolean argument, defaults to yes. The --high-priority command line
option takes precedence.
realtime-scheduling= Try to acquire SCHED_FIFO scheduling for the IO
threads. The same security concerns as mentioned above apply. However,
if PA enters an endless loop, realtime scheduling causes a system
lockup. Thus, realtime scheduling should only be enabled on trusted
machines for now. Please note that only the IO threads of PulseAudio
are made real-time. The controlling thread is left a normally scheduled
thread. Thus enabling the high-priority option is orthogonal. See
pulseaudio(1) for more information. Takes a boolean argument, defaults
to yes. The --realtime command line option takes precedence.
realtime-priority= The realtime priority to acquire, if
realtime-scheduling is enabled. Note: JACK uses 10 by default, 9 for
clients. Thus it is recommended to choose the PulseAudio real-time
priorities lower. Some PulseAudio threads might choose a priority a
little lower or higher than the specified value. Defaults to 5.
nice-level= The nice level to acquire for the daemon, if high-priority
is enabled. Note: on some distributions X11 uses -10 by default.
Defaults to -11.