Ubuntu 12.04: Replacing pulseaudio with Alsa?

Because of skype sound issues I was told to replace pulseaudio with alsa. I only found a solution for Ubuntu 10.10.

Does this still work for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin?
Or does it still not make any sense to replace pulseaudio with alsa (as Jorge Castro said in his comment)?
Or should I stick to pulseaudio AND alsa?
I don't want to mess up my system. Thanks!


This seems to work, though you must understand that it isn't replacing pulseaudio with alsa but just removing pulseaudio(the front-end).

sudo apt-get autoremove pulseaudio

However alsa still needs a graphical user interface for you to easily communicate with it say goodbye to the easy integrated indicator that Ubuntu comes with

sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer

You can also do all of this in the Ubuntu Software Centre.


I solved my problem after months and months of not being able to get it working properly. The only way I could get the mic to work with Skype was to switch off Pulse by setting 'autospawn=off', and then I'd lose my lovely desktop volume control, until:- I discovered that this laptop has "stereo, or mono" input via the built in microphone (sorry, can't remember which), but the solution was to open pavucontrol, split the channels on the input (microphone) and reduce the volume of one of the channels to zero. Works perfectly, haven't had a problem since. I now use Alsa and Pulse, all normal and I have all the useful sound controls of pulse with the alsa backend.