In the survey thread, a couple of responses mentioned missing calls because of ringtone problems - which I take to be either volume too low, or too much latency, or both. Here are some thoughts on that.
1) In case this isn't already well known... FSO actually does nothing at all with the "volume" setting that you can set in SHR settings, or Paroli, or in general via the preferences interface. The only relevant code is: oeventsd/fso_actions.py: self.audio_action = AudioAction( self.sound_path, self.loop, self.length ) if self.volume != 0 else None In other words, all non-zero volume values are equivalent. 2) I tried to measure startup latency by using `time', for various ways of playing a 9.3s Ogg clip and an equivalent .wav file: ========================= debian-gta02:/usr/share/sounds# time mplayer kayleigh.ogg A: 9.0 (08.9) of 9.3 (09.2) 40.1% real 0m12.242s debian-gta02:/usr/share/sounds# time play kayleigh.ogg Duration: 00:00:09.29 Title: Kayleigh real 0m10.680s debian-gta02:/usr/share/sounds# time play kayleigh.ogg Duration: 00:00:09.29 Title: Kayleigh real 0m10.015s debian-gta02:/usr/share/sounds# time play kayleigh.wav Duration: 00:00:09.29 real 0m9.652s debian-gta02:/usr/share/sounds# time play kayleigh.wav Duration: 00:00:09.29 real 0m9.951s debian-gta02:/usr/share/sounds# time gst-launch filesrc location=/usr/share/sounds/kayleigh.ogg ! oggdemux ! vorbisdec ! audioconvert ! alsasink Execution ended after 9384127000 ns. real 0m11.881s debian-gta02:/usr/share/sounds# time aplay kayleigh.wav Playing WAVE 'kayleigh.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo real 0m9.709s ========================= There's nothing conclusive here, because I didn't repeat the tests enough times yet; but it looks like there's an additional latency of at least 0.5-1s associated with playing an .ogg instead of a .wav, and rather more than that with gst-launch. This and the volume issue suggest to me that it would be better for FSO only to handle plain audio data, and to play it (i.e. when an incoming call or message comes) using the most lowlevel method (such as aplay). An external settings application could handle conversion from the user's sound file to .wav, and as part of that could allow the user to adjust the volume and preview the ringtone. Comments? Is there a reason why the complexity (and latency) of handling multiple sound formats should be _inside_ FSO? Regards, Neil _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community