Airplay sink no longer visible in pulseaudio

Question

I'm trying to send audio over airplay (RAOP) from Ubuntu 14.04. The pulseaudio-module-raop in Ubuntu used to support my 2nd-gen Airport Express, but it no longer appears in my list of pulseaudio sinks. It's been 6 months since I used it, with a lot changing on my system, including a successful upgrade from 12.04 to 14.04. Somewhere along the line I assume something got misconfigured or maybe a prefs file deleted.

I've enabled "Make discoverable Airplay AirTunes" sound devices locally. I've tried deleting the pulseaudio preference files I can find and uninstalling/reinstalling pulseaudio; airplay still doesn't work. I even upgraded to the in-development pulseaudio 5.0 - same results. Pulse seems to work fine except it doesn't "see" my Airplay devices.

As an experiment, I built the experimental RAOP2 version of pulse. It sees my devices and can send audio to them, but it has to be be manually launched and I'd rather be using something from a ppa for updates, etc. I know it used to work so I want to get it (not the experimental raop2 - I already have that working) going again.

Not sure where to look next.

Solution

From the RAOP2 site here's the guide to get RAOP2 working:

First set up your build system.

sudo apt-get install build-essential paprefs git pulseaudio-module-raop intltool libjack0
sudo apt-get build-dep pulseaudio

Now get the code and build the software

git clone https://github.com/hfujita/pulseaudio-raop2.git
cd pulseaudio-raop2
./autogen.sh
CFLAGS="-ggdb3 -O0" LDFLAGS="-ggdb3" ./configure --prefix=$HOME --enable-x11 --disable-hal-compat
make

Now before you can run your new pulseaudio, you need to make some settings and kill the original pulseaudio.

Run paprefs and check the option to make AirTunes devices available.

Prevent pulseaudio from starting automatically:

mkdir ~/.pulse
echo "autospawn=no" >> ~/.pulse/client.conf

On Ubuntu 14.10 and earlier you need to copy over the alsa configuration:

cp /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/extra-hdmi.conf src/modules/alsa/mixer/profile-sets/

Now to every time you want to use an AirPlay speaker you need to run your new pulseaudio by doing these two things: kill all existing instances of pulseaudio and run the new one (from the pulseaudio-raop2 directory):

pkill pulseaudio
./src/pulseaudio -n -F src/default.pa -p $(pwd)/src/ --log-time=1 -vvvv 2>&1 | tee pulse.log

This also creates a log file while running, which should help to identify problems.

To stop the RAOP2 version of pulseaudio, press ctrl+c and start the original one with pulseaudio -D

Comments

[Takkat]

You may also have a client.conf in ~/.config/pulse/. System wide configruation is in /etc/pulse/ but previous configs in your HOME will override this.

[Fred Hamilton]

Thanks. Half the battle seems to be locating all the various config files in all the various places...

[fret]

In order to remove the current configuration and restore it to original, you could purge pulseaudo (sudo apt-get purge pulesaudio) and then install it again (sudo apt-get install pulseaudio). The manpages state: "Purge is identical to remove except that packages are removed and purged. Purge meaning that any configuration files are deleted too."

[Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy]

You mentioned that you troubleshooted a different PA problem. Could you remember some of the things that you altered and add those to your question? And what exactly was that other problem?

[Fred Hamilton]

@fret - tried "purge" but some files still lingered, pulse directories weren't deleted, etc. I'm making a manual list as I come about them. Thanks for the "dpkg -S pulseaudio" tip.

[Fred Hamilton]

@Xieerqi: Trying to do 3 things: make mpd work with pulse (that's been a problem for as long as I can remember, that's why I've used alsa up to now), make pulse work with airplay, and make airplay work with my airplay hardware. With enough flailing, I can usually get any 1 of them working, maybe sometimes 2, never 3.

[mniess]

@FredHamilton I'm not exactly sure what you are doing. Are you using your Ubuntu as a bluetooth speaker for you iOS devices?

[Fred Hamilton]

@mniess My music library is on my ubuntu box with an mpd server. I want to be able to send music from there to different airplay devices around my house (one Airport Express and 3 ROCKIs).

[mniess]

@FredHamilton It looks like you're bot following the raop2 instructions to the letter (especially since it did work at a point). You do not want to uninstall pulseaudio. You also don't want to replace the existing pulseaudio with the raop2 version. You want them seperately. Stop the system pa and start the raop2 pa.

[Fred Hamilton]

Thanks - I already tried that and it works. I mentioned that in my original question but it was sort of buried. I've rewritten the question to more clearly state that I'm trying to fix the original (standard ubuntu, non-raop2) configuration.

[mniess]

So regarding your original question, my comment it's the solution. If you want pulseaudio 5 packaged, you'll have to get into packaging as pa5 is still beta and will definitely not be included in the next Ubuntu release. Unfortunately the raop2 changes are not compatible anymore with pa4 so a simple patch is not possible. Creating working pa5 packages that completely replace pa4 without regressions is also quite a task.

[Fred Hamilton]

I guess I'm having some trouble communicating what I want. I don't want pa5 or RAOP2 - I want to get me "stock" pa4 with RAOP(1) working like it did 6 months ago.

[Fred Hamilton]

I experimented with RAOP2 and pa5 in case they might provide a solution and/or be useful in debugging (since they show my hardware CAN work).

[mniess]

Ahh, okay. ;-) Well if the original RAOP used to work and doesn't anymore, I'd report a bug (guessing you're doing everything else right).

[Fred Hamilton]

There's a good chance that I did something to mess it up while I was flailing around trying to get mpd and pulse to play nice. So I don't want to report a bug. Maybe I'll try a new install on a spare drive and see how that works...