Upgrade PulseAudio To Version 0.9.21 In Ubuntu Karmic From A Launchpad Repository (PPA)

PulseAudio 0.9.21 was released yesterday and comes with even more bug fixes than version 0.9.20 which was released just two weeks ago. You can see a list of changes, HERE.

Besides bug fixes, PulseAudio 0.9.21 also integrates the device-manager module.

PulseAudio's device-manager module is used to keep track of the names and descriptions of any and all audio devices. This module then also provides a protocol extension for other programs to query this information. At this time, device-manager will largely be used in integrating support for KDE Phonon. The device-manager module is considered experimental at this time along with its API.

[information provided by Phoronix]

Like I told you earlier, if you are having issues with the sound on your PC / laptop / netbook, you could try upgrading ALSA to version 1.0.21. If that, however, does not fix it, you can try to also upgrade Pulseaudio to the latest version (read on).

Adding the Ubuntu Audio Dev team PPA repository to install Pulseaudio 0.9.21

Once again, I would like to remind you that this Launchpad repository (PPA) is experimental (and so are the packages, obviously) so only upgrade to Pulseaudio 0.9.21 only if your sound is buggy or does not work and you know what you are doing!

Ok, let's get started. To add this repository, open a terminal and paste this (there are packages available only for Ubuntu Karmic!):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa

Then, to upgrade to Pulseaudio 0.9.21, run the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade