sorry for breaking in... a very interesting discussion :)
On 20.04.2013 19:41, Alan McKinnon wrote: > ...
But back to audio. My needs are simplistic - all sound goes through the laptop speakers and I need one global volume knob. When a headset is plugged into the 3.5mm jack, all sound goes there. For a mic, I have the internal one and whilst there is a 3.5mm jack for an external mic, I've never used it but I do expect it to work when plugged in and to disconnect the internal mic.
Absolutely true. I also can predict that ALSA config tools are at least no more complicated than any other sound system's, including PA.
Folk like Canek have complex setups that would drive me insane. I'm more than happy to fiddle with all that on my HTPC and home audio system, but never on my laptop. There's the extremes. Now, how would we determine the % numbers of how real users really use real audio?
Probably there's no way. But at large, I believe it would not be a big error to say that 90% of linux users never need anything in excess of ALSA. Even that is, well, too optimistic for PA.
When I heard about some sort of problems with apps when starting them in a wrong order, or bugs in Flash, or in WINE, or wherever, and *the* sound server which is designed to fix those bugs, eh... Well, just remember a couple of years ago when there was OSS, and ALSA came in to fix the problems of OSS-aware software. And now one'd say: here's *the* sound server that solves all problems of ALSA-using software, ... so the question is how long will it take to create another sound-superserver which will take care of problems with *that* already-fixing-everything soundserver? Or should bugs probably be fixed in the bugged software?
Another aspect, to my mind, is that there's a misunderstanding what "sound server" is for. A software on its own should not need any kind of server, it should just input/output audio. ALSA is itself pretty well aware of what is input and what is output. If one needs something like playing one stream through e.g. mic and recording another stream through e.g. headphones, he'd just install whatever sound server he deems fit. But it's improper to have apps use the "sound server" interface directly, it's like a browser being forced to use MAC addresses instead of HTTP (or sockets). Why ever build apps with pulseaudio support (or any other stuff of that sort) if it is just a layer atop the sound system? And that's the problem with pulseaudio: it wants too much. Another example, there's music composition software for windows which uses e.g. ASIO. But it's kinda stupid to require all windows audio software to support ASIO. As for complex cases, there are some, certainly. But the rule is: don't oversimplify the complex, nor -- overcomplicate the simple. The latter seems the way to go for Lennart ...
-- Best wishes, Yuri K. Shatroff
