On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 10:48 PM, Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 04/20/2013 05:34 AM, Walter Dnes wrote: >> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 09:28:03AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote >> > > [snip] > >>> If you need it, PA can be great. Not everyone needs or wants it, many >>> people are quite content to just carry on as they always did and aren't >>> fazed with minor niggles about their audio. You seem to fall in this >>> category, so do many others. >> >> I think you've hit the nail on the head. Complex setups require >> complex software... deal with it. An analogy is that an 18-wheeler >> semi-tractor trailer with a 17-speed manual transmission (plus air brakes >> that require months of training to manage/use) is much more powerful >> than a Chevy Sonic hatchback when it comes to hauling huge loads. But >> for someoneone who merely wants to zip out to the supermarket and buy a >> week's groceries, the hatchback is much more appropriate. >> >> Similarly, PulseAudio may be better at handling complex situations >> like you describe. The yelling and screaming you're hearing are from >> the 99% of people whose setups are not complex enough to justify >> PulseAudio. Making 100% of setups more complex in order to handle the >> 1% of edge cases is simply wrong. >> > > The sad thing is, I've not infrequently wound up with sound systems that > were *too* complex for PulseAudio to handle. At least, they were too > complex for the configuration interfaces available, and documentation > for how to do things more precisely (without writing code) was not > forthcoming. > > Here's a scenario exactly as I was dealing with it around 2008: > > Dodo was a combination HTPC/desktop box.[1] It had five displays and > three audio interfaces attached to it. Four of the displays sat on my > desk, one of the displays was a 32" 720p TV that served as the home > theater screen.[2] The machine was sometimes used in both roles at once. > > The three audio interfaces were: > > 1) The onboard audio, which I sometimes used while using the box as a > workstation. > 2) A USB audio device, which I used if I was chilling on the couch and > needed localized audio > 3) A professional audio interface (I forget what, now) that fed my > receiver as well as a crossover that built an LFE channel. > > PA kinda worked in this scenario, up until I physically interacted with > the USB audio device. If I plugged into that, *everything* would > suddenly route through the USB audio device, despite my careful routing > of different applications to different audio sources. >
Probably no longer needed, but this is done by a default pulseaudio module, module-switch-on-connect, which is installed by default on Ubuntu. In /etc/pulse/default.pa, there would be a line load-module module-switch-on-connect that would do this. If disabled, you keep your routing after connects. No nice gui for configuring it as far as I can tell, though. > If I'd learned to use JACK, things probably would have been easier...but > I was using Ubuntu,[3] everything seemed designed around leveraging PA, > and I hadn't learned to discard fancy desktop environments yet. > > You know the sad thing, though? ALSA would support that configuration > very well, too. It has enough internal routing and mixing logic that > it'd work. > > > [1] It was also the home gateway router, too, but that's another > story...and not much of one. > [2] Incidentally, this was the same setup where I'd successfully mixed > ATI and nVidia graphics hardware. I used the nvidia proprietary drivers > and the open-source support for ATI...which admittedly wasn't much. But > that's another story. > [3] I wasn't consistently using Gentoo yet. That rather relates to the > machine doubling as the network gateway...[4] > [4] No, I wouldn't do a setup this complicated as one machine as a > keystone in the network. At least, not again. > -- This email is: [ ] actionable [ ] fyi [ ] social Response needed: [ ] yes [ ] up to you [ ] no Time-sensitive: [ ] immediate [ ] soon [ ] none
