On 05/08/2013 12:15 AM, Len Ovens wrote:
I looked at a number of audio mixers: (I used three audio IFs, an old
ens1370, An intel HDA (most common internal audio) and an ICE1712
multitrack card)
pavucontrol and kmix: These both control pulseaudio and only affect ALSA
settings of any sort through the pulse audio interface. kmix is the the
kde version pavucontrol. There is no reason to attempt to make kmix or
pavucontrol work without PA running, rather they should stop running
gracefully if PA is not there.
I would suggest that pavucontrol be the default PA controller for desktop
audio that requires it. However, it would make sense to use kmix for the
kde meta currently planned.
ffado-mixer: This is the only choice for FireWire audio right now.
HDSPmixer, echomixer and mudita24: These mixers are designed for
specific audio interfaces and are the best mixer to use in these cases.
alsamixer: This comes with alsa and runs in the terminal. It only
controls alsa. It gives the names alsa uses in its config and is not
always easy to understand. Alsamixer also is often confused about what is
an input or an output and the same control may show up in both places or
be doubled in the same screen. Moving either one of the controls affects
the other. PA does a great job of selecting the correct
controls. However, when using jackd(bus), input and output levels need to
be adjusted at the card.
GUI alsa mixers: Interesting thing here. All of them seem to default to
the pulse master control. This makes me think that pulse calls itself the
default ALSA card(s). (I can't see alsamixer-gui having pulse code in it)
I think this is because /usr/share/alsa/pulse-alsa.conf has this entry
in it:
ctl.!default {
type pulse
}
...making the default ctl (i e mixer) interface the pulseaudio one.
Alsamixer (the ncurses version) has a specific patch to ignore the
pulseaudio interface, but you can still get to it if you do "alsamixer
-D pulse".
We need a new mixer!Lets think about what a dream recording alsa mixer
would be like. Then we can think about building it. What controls should
be available? what screens should be included? What gui tool kit should be
used? I would think basing the ideas on mudita might be a place to
start... but then I have not used any of the other HW specific mixers and
there may be better ideas. I would suggest starting with the Intel HDA and
AC97 HW.
Before rushing away to write yet another mixer, may I suggest that you
first look at the current choices a bit and see if it is possible to
improve them to do what you want? This does not only have the benefit of
saving you some work to get the basic stuff up and running, it also
makes the final product fit more use cases than just yours (and as a
result, you'll get help finding/fixing bugs and so on). And, many
upstreams are longing for more contributions and a wider user base.
--
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic
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