#139: HAL module only adds the first ALSA device of each card
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Reporter: juergbi | Owner: lennart
Type: enhancement | Status: reopened
Priority: normal | Milestone:
Component: module-alsa-* | Severity: normal
Resolution: | Keywords:
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Comment (by markfal):
It seems to me that lack of detection of more than the 0 device of any
card is becoming a critical need for pulseaudio's future success. The
forums are full of people complaining that they have no way to control
their digital outputs. Another point to be made in this argument, the new
video cards that support HDMI output have their sound device detected as
device 2 and so are completely ignored by hal/pulseaudio.
I really think that hal/pavucontrol should present all the devices
detected and let the user have control over them rather than detect only
device 0 and leave the user with no control over anything that is not
device 0.
Adding the combine function into the pavucontrol gui would fix a lot of
these issues. So would a AC3 passthrough checkbox.
I can understand the concern of lennart:
This patch is not right. On some sound cards surround sound is implemented
via a 4 stereo subdevices which are then combined into a single 7.1
device. Thus it generally doesn't make sense to open subdevices directly,
because only ALSA itself knows what those subdevices are about. The proper
way to open a device for digital out is using the "spdif:" ALSA device
string, not directly opening subdevices which will only work on very few
devices.
But it does not make any sense to just ignore the issue. ALSA has that
information, it is a failure of hal-detect to get it and pass it on to
pavucontrol so it can be presented to the user that is the real issue
here.
I have 5 output devices I would like to use but only 2 are available in
pavucontrol and only one falls into the concerns that lennart expresses.
When I try to add them manually as all I get is errors and the pa daemon
refuses to start. So, as a result, I have only control over 2 speakers and
my headphones working on separate sound cards and no way to control the
sound on the other speakers and the sound to my TVs.
Pulse Audio makes it very easy to control sound over a network, but
impossible to control sound around my living room.
--
Ticket URL: <http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/139#comment:15>
PulseAudio <http://pulseaudio.org/>
The PulseAudio Sound Server
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