On Fri, Mar 09, 2007, Robert Millan [ackstorm] wrote: > In a default install, gnome-media isn't using esound. It attempts to use > OSS directly, which is precisely what you want to avoid (i.e. knowledge on > the underlying implementation).
The default is (or should be) to use autoaudiosink, which will try to select the best output sink. Is this the default value you have seen? autoaudiosink _will_ use esound if it's running (for example because the relevant configuration is set in GNOME to start esound), but this requires the esd plugin indeed. Please note that in the default install esound shouldn't be running IIRC. > My mistake, as Sven pointed out, has been ignoring that gstreamer0.10-esd > can solve the problem properly by using esound. Can you add a dependency > on that package? Well, technically it would be useful to have it available, and I think that the latest esound plugin in gstreamer will _not_ spawn a daemon if it's not running (which is what we want); however, esound is not really rocket quality, and I wouldn't want to advocate it by pulling the elements; in fact, my personal preference goes to being able to remove it entirely. I suppose that we should do one of these: - stop pulling esound altogether (but this would break e.g. the sound daemon option in GNOME), and suggest it only; alsa dmix should be enough for most users - pull esound _support_ completely, that is gstreamer0.10-esd, and not only esound, but not turn it on by default - pull support for pulseaudio instead which is a compatible replacement and is of good quality; we can't enable it by default either because it's heavy on the CPU and not all users want a sound daemon when they are happy with the capabilities of their sound card or of dmix The only realistic option for etch is either to add a dep on gstreamer0.10-esd (perhaps in the meta-gnome2 package which pulls esound?), or to remove the dep on esound in meta-gnome2. Perhaps it's too late for etch already. My preference goes to the third option for lenny; pulling pulseaudio by default, leaving people with the choice to remove it or use esound instead, and by using ALSA without pulseaudio by default. > We also need to make sure that "autodetect" will figure out that -esd is > installed and works, rather than attempting to use broken OSS (EBUSY) or > ALSA (missing libesd-alsa0). It will if it's available. On Ubuntu, it will prefer ALSA dmix if available over Esound IIRC, but I don't think we have that patch. -- Loïc Minier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>