LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess [LWN.net]

LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 21, 2008 22:10 UTC (Sun) by mezcalero (subscriber, #45103)
In reply to: LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess by djpig
Parent article: LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

You're wrong.

One of the biggest problems in volume control we have right now is that we have too many volume controls in line. The app might have one, the device has a couple, the hardware might have even more. It is very confusing to the user to find his way through this jungle and figure out which one is the one that is responsible for the low volume of the output.

The fix for this is to coalesce all those volume controls at a single place which should naturally be the sound server. If applications then want to expose a volume control slider they should expose the one maintained by the sound server -- instead that everyone implements its own.

With the "flat volumes" feature of upcoming PA 0.9.13 we even will be able to coalesce per-stream and per-device volume into one.

In summary: requesting that each app should implement its own volume controls goes in the wrong direction. Bad idea. Right in contrary exporting vol control to the sound server is the right answer here.

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LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 21, 2008 23:23 UTC (Sun) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600) [Link]

I'd also add that it's trivially easy to posit an application which doesn't provide a volume control. Or an application which provides volume control, but hidden deep within labyrinthine controls - like MythTV or many games. Or an application which is normally quite acceptably loud most of the time but some times is too soft or loud - e.g. mplayer playing some video files, or in a situation where you want it playing in the background.

The real point here is that having every application (hopefully) implement a volume control (and hopefully do it well), and having it in a different location for each application, is a usability nightmare. Having one set of centralised controls smooths over a multitude of minor sins.

Have fun,

Paul

LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 22, 2008 10:07 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

It is very confusing to the user to find his way through this jungle and figure out which one is the one that is responsible for the low volume of the output.

Considering that this argument is more or less the same as the one in favour of per-app volume controls, one would be inclined to think of a protocol as a solution for this kind of confusion. But it seems like this has already been patented. Sigh.