Re: [LAD] Guide to Linux Sound APIs

On Tue, 30.09.08 23:41, hollunder@email-addr-hidden (hollunder@email-addr-hidden) wrote:

> > So, hey ho. There's no accounting for distributions.
> >
> > Nice utility. I installed it from the Ubuntu 8.04 repo; the first
> > time I ran it (in a system where the soundcards were already being
> > hogged by Flash and JACK and thus Pulse hadn't been able to open any
> > outputs) it crashed on startup in a string assignment (segv in
> > Glib::ustring::operator=, no other debug symbols available I'm
> > afraid), but it worked when run against a working PulseAudio daemon.
> > I assume the Ubuntu package isn't the freshest anyway.
> >
> >
> > Chris
>
> You're right that it's badly integrated. I don't know regular ubuntu
> but ubuntu studio. There you need to start the 'pulse audio device
> chooser' which starts the tray icon. rightclick on it does nothing,
> left click opens the menu (that's where the fun UI-part starts IMHO..).
> Then the user gets a list of other apps to start, most of them likely
> unneeded. 'Volume control' (pavucontrol) is pretty much the only ui the
> user needs. There's the next strange thing: half the functionality is
> 'hidden' behind the (IMHO unusual) right-click on various parts of the
> ui. Yes, there's a hint on the bottom of the window, but still..

padevchooser (i.e. the "pa device chooser") is obsolete. People
shouldn't ship that at all.

pavucontrol is the only tool that matters. On Fedora it is the default
volume control (at least in GNOME).

Also, the current version of pavucontrol has a button for showing the
menu to make thinks more accesible.

I am wondering why Ubuntu Studio is shipping PA at all. PA is not
useful for audio production.

> So yes, the ui is useful, but could be more useful (I wish I had a 5.1
> to 2 downmix option in there :)), the ui could imho be better and it
> could be far better integrated in the DE.
> Note that this refers to the version in Ubuntu 8.04, I haven't seen any
> other.

There will be an option to change the output port for a sound card
on-the-fly. I.e. from stereo analog, to 5.1 analog to spdif and
back. But that still needs time since ALSA currently doesn't have an
API that exports that information in a useful way.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net         ICQ# 11060553
http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4
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