Stellarium waiting several seconds on 'Audio' at startup

[freebrowser1]

When starting Stellarium it shows a splash screen showing what is loading and then it starts Stellarium normally.
The issue is that in the splash screen I see 'Initializing audio...' which takes several seconds. But In don't have audio (and why does a planetarium app need sound ?) so this is completely useless.

Expected Behaviour

No audio loading.

Actual Behaviour

Loading Audio at startup takes several seconds.

Steps to reproduce

Start Stellarium on Ubuntu without sound drivers.

System

• Stellarium version: 24.1 installed with apt package manager in Ubuntu.
• Operating system: Ubuntu 22.04.4
• Graphics Card: ? (it is not a graphics issue)
• Screen type (if applicable): 1366x768 (it happens at any resolution)

Logfile

stellarium 2>&1 | tee err2 results in attached file.
err2.log

[alex-w]

Is it from our PPA?

[freebrowser1]

Is it from our PPA?

Yes, after installing Ubuntu and Stellarium with apt install stellarium I got Stellarium 20.1 and then I did
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stellarium/stellarium-releases and reinstalled with apt install stellarium and then I got the latest 24.1 version.

[10110111]

and why does a planetarium app need sound ?

I also thought this first of all. From the code it looks like it's only used in the scripting engine, to make it possible for scripts to emit sounds.

[gzotti]

Yes, audio is required by the scripting engine, so this is required. Just like you have an audio system in a physical planetarium.
Is the actual audio initialisation taking so long, or is the next relevant message just late?
If we want to be greedy with CPU cycles, add yet another config option to disable multimedia modules, and message handling in the scripting engine for the case that the Multimedia part has not been initalized.

[alex-w]

Please check the fresh beta version of Stellarium:
https://code.launchpad.net/~stellarium/+archive/ubuntu/stellarium-beta

[github-actions]

Hello @freebrowser1!

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