Re: GNOME 2.26 module inclusion discussion heats up

[Lennart Poettering <mztabzr 0pointer de>]

On Mon, 12.01.09 10:01, Enver ALTIN (ealtin gmail com) wrote:

> On Sun, 2009-01-11 at 17:53 +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > I’m more worried about the applet. While I perfectly understand the
> > benefits gnome-volume-control can have by using PA directly, there is
> > nothing in the applet’s UI that will be improved this way. Why not keep
> > the current GStreamer code, porting it to a notification icon if you
> > find it better? It would also be more consistent with the sound setting
> > in gnome-settings-daemon.
> 
> There's a bit more.
> 
> With some sound hardware on certain laptops, internal speakers and
> headphone output are controlled by different mixer channels even though
> the input is the same. Also there exists some hardware that may need
> some retouching with some mixer channels called, switches.
> 
> With the latest gnome-volume-control there's no visible way to configure
> other mixer channels when using pulseaudio.
> 
> This causes some annoyances, like, no sound from headphones while
> internal speakers shows no problems.
> 
> Removing the old fashioned multi-slider mixer in favor of a much simpler
> UI sounds like a good idea; but considering these regressions I'm
> worried too.

This is mostly a problem in ALSA. ALSA currently lacks any
functionality to query how the exported mixer controls actually work
together. Also stuff like jack sensing is a very recent addition to
the ALSA API. Due to this it is very difficult for PA to handle
devices like the one you described properly and automatically
(i.e. listening to jack sensing and switching between internal
speakers/jack automatically). Before we can properly fix this we need
some more groundwork in ALSA done. Due to lack of manpower I
unfortunately don't see this coming any time soon.

I don't think the advent of sound cards that do this kind of switching
in software should hold as back and require us to export every single
crazy volume control to the user. 

Also note, that you can always drop to "alsamixer -c0" to fiddle with
all the exotic mixer controls directly. It is very unfortunate that
this might be necessary for now, 

Hey, and this is Free Software after all. If you want see this fixed
properly once and for all then you're welcome to start hacking. Audio
on Linux could use some fresh blood!

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net         ICQ# 11060553
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