Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Bypass software mixer?

[Grant <emailgrant gmail com>]

>> Can I bypass the software mixer to leave the audio untouched until it
>> hits the DAC?
>
> If you disable crossfading in rhythmbox,

Will that disable gapless playback?

> set the rhythmbox volume control to full volume,

Sounds like faith-based mixer bypassing. :)  Any way to prevent the
volume slider from affecting the volume at all?  My ALSA silders don't
affect the volume with my USB DAC.

> select ALSA (or a specific device) for 'music and movies' in the GNOME sound preferences, and make

I recently learned that if you select ALSA or "default device" the
sound is going to hit dmix and be resampled to 16-bit/48khz.  If you
specify a hardware device like hw:0,0 then dmix is bypassed.

> sure you're not using pulseaudio or any other sound daemon, then the

I've gotten rid of all that stuff.

> data written to ALSA will be about as untouched as you're going to get.

For me there's a big difference between untouched and "as untouched as
you're going to get".  Is there no clear way to get the sound through
the system without molesting it when using rhythmbox?

> Other than that, it's not particularly clear what you mean by 'the
> software mixer'.  The term 'mixer' means a number of different things,
> and just about everything in the picture is 'software'.

I want the exact same digital information in the decoded FLAC file to
hit the DAC.  High-quality computer audio is really coming of age and
I think this type of thing will be requested more and more.

I switched from Rhythmbox to gmpc a couple weeks ago.  I do like the
server/client configuration with mpd, and it's very easy to disable
the software mixer and specify hw:0,0 right in /etc/mpd.conf.
However, Rhythmbox still has the best interface I've used.  I miss it.

- Grant