Eduard Bloch wrote: ... > > Honnestly, the current set of mixer controls is cumbersome. $user can > hardly understand what all the controls are good for, and mixer software > is not user-friendly either. The Live! mixer from Creative gives you a > "joystick" control where you can move the marker around until you feel > beeing in the middle of the room. > > And ALSA controls, ie. using alsamixer or even worse, alsamixergui? Lots > of settings, some with discrete values, some with analog, with > foo/foo-LFE/foo-Center/foo-Surround mixer per input source and lots of > other things that are either not sufficiently described trough, or that > I would hardly use, or which are just not working (showing no effects), > all mixed together in one GUI without good visible structure, etc. > > Yes, I talk about useability which just sucks. I imagine a more clear > frontend/backend infrastructure, an ultimate solution: > > - access to all backend settings is exported with consistent, fixed names > (keywords) > - a wrapper in the library has a database of sound cards and of > applicability of particular controls to it > - an UI control layer would have a database of possible > "end-user-to-control-setting" wrapper. There may be different schemes > of such kind, where compatibility with drivers is documented as well. > - HMI related issues like the grouping hints for the particular > controls in the schemes, the kind of control (binary/discrete/ > stepless) > > This way, a "new style" ALSA mixer could simply offer different user > models: "simple", "advanced", "full control". Depending on the mode and > on the soundcard (to be controlled), the UI would select a control > scheme. Eg. a set of the most common controls and the "joystick" > mentioned above for "simple" user. A similar things with "advanced" but > more controls, eg. extra joystick per input source attacheable, and > "full control" would be similar to the current chaos. > > So far from my imagination... > > Eduard.
I have a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 digital model SB0220 card. Tonight I finally solved a problem with my CD-RW drive (had to *disable* DMA with hdparm to get it to work), and was playing back the result and similar thoughts hit me. I had digital audio extraction enabled for playback, input volume was on "line" (logical enough but it would have been good to be able to add a label of CD digital out), output volume was on "PCM", and "PCM" had to be adjusted down to prevent clipping. I've resorted to having a "cheat sheet" of handwritten notes for what inputs and outputs, switches and levels are needed for playing CD's, recording from Microphone, recording from line-in, playing from hard disk, and playing MIDI using the built-in synthesiser. Being able to record these details attached to kmix would help reduce the confusion and inadvertently wrong settings for a given recording and/or playback task. So I filed a wishlist bug report against kmix suggesting user defined labels/notes for mixer controls (Bug#380211: kmix: wish to be able to attach documentation to controls). Arthur. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
