LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Well, when I want to control the sounds coming out of my laptop, I would generally head to the place where the sound controls are, not in every application on the system that has any kind of capability of producing noise. Do you really think having dozens of apps, each with their own independent volume control, is a good idea? It's stuff like that, everyone going off and implementing their own incompatible audio systems, that helped get us into this mess in the first place.