Re: Tragic State of FreeBSD Audio/Sound

y'all!

please file bugs. like, whenever i have an audio problem i fire off a
bug and then i poke christos on IRC and we figure it out.

I have like 11 laptops running freebsd-16 dating back to a T420 and
early macbook air laptops. I haven't got anything earlier as they
start being i386 and not amd64.
Audio works on all of them just fine.


-adrian

On Mon, 20 Jul 2026 at 07:01, Shawn Webb <[email protected]> wrote=
:
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2026 at 02:04:25AM +0200, 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 i=
n mind - now - to the core of the issue ...
> >
> > I always considered FreeBSD OSS audio/sound subsystem superior to all A=
LSA/PulseAudio/PipeWire and other dramas from the Linux world ... but not a=
nymore.
> >
> > Somewhere between 14.3-RELEASE and 14.4-RELEASE things begin to get bro=
ken - I thought that upgrade to latest and greatest 15.1-RELEASE would solv=
e 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 thi=
s:
> >
> > % mixer -f ${DEV} vol.volume=3D+0.05
> >
> > ... from MUCH MORE friendly syntax.
> >
> > But these random 'boozing' sounds are just unacceptable ... and I can n=
ot even tell where they came from ... is it OSS problem? Is is PulseAudio p=
roblem? Something in between? Because there is NOTHING in the logs for audi=
o.
> >
> > Its also possible to get that file from my personal 'mediafire.com' acc=
ount here:
> > - https://mediafire.com/file/jw3cpk8g77rvks2/freebsd-tragic-audio-sound=
.mp4/file
> >
> > ... and its not some fancy laptop from yesterday ... its a ThinkPad T48=
0 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 despa=
ir ... as newer releases only made these things worse ... I have been repea=
ting this over and over again - but its again probably the issue that 'too =
less' FreeBSD developers use FreeBSD as their daily driver/desktop/laptop s=
ystem.
> >
> > Sorry to disappoint.
>
> I've been experiencing audio issues as well since the recent work
> started a little while ago (a year? two years? my chronological memory
> isn't the best.)
>
> It's broken bad enough that I now don't use audio on my systems at
> all. I haven't filed any bug reports, though, because it just hasn't
> been a priority for me. I've got tons of other systems where audio
> works fine and it's not really a bother to use those instead of my
> fbsd/hbsd systems.
>
> The only downside is when I want to make sure the YouTube link I'm
> about to post in random places is really the right one from an audio
> perspective.
>
> Perhaps some day I'll care enough about the problem to actually dig
> in. But for now, I've got higher priority items on my list to tackle.
> I just thought I'd provide another anectodal data point with this
> email.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Shawn Webb
> Cofounder / Security Engineer
> HardenedBSD
>
> Signal Username:  shawn_webb.74
> Tor-ified Signal: +1 (719) 756-1197 / activist_opsec.27
> https://git.hardenedbsd.org/hardenedbsd/pubkeys/-/raw/master/Shawn_Webb/0=
3A4CBEBB82EA5A67D9F3853FF2E67A277F8E1FA.pub.asc