[Utopia] soundcards in utopia

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

Heya,

After some discussion with Matthew on Saturday, and previous talks with
DavidZ, here's a little something on what could/should be done with
soundcard in the Utopia.

In Fedora, we have system-config-soundcard, it sucks less than it used
to, but it still sucks an awful lot.

What we want to be able to do:

* Rosario bought a small USB soundcard to plug it in her hi-fi, because
the computer speakers weren't loud enough. She plugs it in, says she
wants to use it to play music and her music goes through the hi-fi
without stopping.

* Jessica likes to shake it when speaking on the phone. Since she
started using Skype, she can't move from her desk. So she bought a
bluetooth headset. She wants to connect the headset and use it for all
her VoIP communications, but still wants to use the main speakers and
microphone to work on her music.

* Britanny wants to use her desktop microphone when her webcam with the
microphone isn't plugged in, as she doesn't want her would-be boyfriend
to see her in her undies, so unplugs the camera before speaking to him
on GnomeMeeting.

Implementation

HAL can be used to detect soundcards being plugged in and removed, as
well as headsets being paired and connected to.

It might be necessary to write another "daemon" like gnome-volume-
manager to handle new events from HAL, and modify the sound
configuration according to the user's preferences.

The GNOME sound control-center applet could be the place to select what
soundcard and output to use for different types of sound inputs and
outputs (Sound events, Music/Movies, Audio/Video conferencing).

libalsa and possibly programs would need to be told when another audio
device should be used for capture or playback without the need to
restart the program.

Users can have different preferred audio devices, using the ~/.asoundrc
file instead of the global /etc/asound.conf file.

Links

HAL:
http://hal.freedesktop.org

gnome-volume-manager:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gnome-volume-manager/

ALSA:
http://alsa-project.org/

---
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> 
I've never been a pot smoker. It's funny how people think that. -- Owen
Wilson