Re: alsa mixers
> On Wed, May 8, 2013, at 07:09 AM, David Henningsson wrote: >> 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. Speaking of which, I came across qamix, a sub project of ams. Are you still involved with ams? Do you know if qamix is still alive? It does have profiles for each audio card (or it has profiles so one could be made for any card). It is also midi controlable. The screenshots I could find look good too. It could be upgraded to qt4. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: alsa mixers
Alsa question... aplay -l gives: card 0: AudioPCI [Ensoniq AudioPCI], device 0: ES1370/1 [ES1370 DAC2/ADC] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: AudioPCI [Ensoniq AudioPCI], device 1: ES1370/2 [ES1370 DAC1] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 alsamixer (any of them :) when pointed at hw:0 shows the controls for both hw:0,0 and hw:0,1 Is this normal? Nice to know that dac0 would not show up in jack, but I should use the dac1 control instead :P -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: alsa mixers
On Wed, May 8, 2013 6:32 am, Kaj Ailomaa wrote: > On Wed, May 8, 2013, at 07:09 AM, David Henningsson wrote: >> 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. > I agree. All of the desktop environments seem to have their own mixers at the moment. So, either one should add stuff to all of those, or pick one that would suit all DEs and work on making it more versatile. So perhaps a suitable profile library would make more sense. I somehow don't think we could find a mixer all DEs would enbrace. However, a DE agnostic mixer would be nice. alsamixergui would work for any DE that uses X, but I think gnome, KDE and xfce will want something that follows their (or the user's) theme. > There should only be need for one mixer application for ALSA devices, no matter if PA is running or not. > The design of the PA mixers is only including controls for PA profile based controls. It's lacking the full set of HW controls for the device, which is quite logical from the PA users point of view. But, as soon as one is not using PA, the mixer becomes next to useless. Yes, one is enough. I don't know that changing the desktop sound is important though. Each DE has their own idea of what to do. personally, I think the QAS utilities are the best of the bunch. Adding profiles to it would be good. The faders are different enough from any of the toolkit sliders that they are theme agnostic. > Here's a design idea for such a mixer. It has two > 1. PA view - The main controls are categorized and sorted for the PA profile (like they are now). To see full list of ALSA controls, one needs to toggle the view to "ALSA view", and in that full view, one clearly sees which controls are used by PA and which are not. > 2. ALSA view - no PA controls if PA is not running, and the overview is categorized and sorted from a ALSA perspective (like in alsamixer). That would make the main mixer have all you need for controlling your card. > One could even go further with adding support for jack (jackdbus), and therefore, also for ffado. I think for now, this part would best be done using a wrapper. But it starts to sound like "YAmixer" real quick. In some ways we really are looking for a new kind of mixer. We really are looking for functionality no one has done yet. While most mixers try to give access to all of alsa's controls, they seem to be desktop use oriented. I don't think anyone has thought from the recording pov while creating these mixers. No one has really looked at what they want in a mixer. It seems all anyone has done is make a gui version of alsamixer. We want a general audio utility. We seem to have a list of needs no application meets right now. Not just there is no app that does all of these things but in many cases no app does any of these things even individually. For a long time The Linux desktop was in catch up mode. The focus has been getting desktop sound to just work. Ok, been there done that. PA may not be complete, but it competes really well with any OS out there. The desktop is being taken care of. Pro audio hasn't been touched except for with card specific utilities... And even those don't cover everything that might be useful. mudita24 for example, could use user selectable fader ganging in the monitor mixer. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: alsa mixers
On Wed, May 8, 2013, at 07:09 AM, David Henningsson wrote:
> 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 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.
>
>
I agree. All of the desktop environments seem to have their own mixers
at the moment. So, either one should add stuff to all of those, or pick
one that would suit all DEs and work on making it more versatile.
There should only be need for one mixer application for ALSA devices, no
matter if PA is running or not.
The design of the PA mixers is only including controls for PA profile
based controls. It's lacking the full set of HW controls for the device,
which is quite logical from the PA users point of view. But, as soon as
one is not using PA, the mixer becomes next to useless.
Here's a design idea for such a mixer. It has two
1. PA view - The main controls are categorized and sorted for the PA
profile (like they are now). To see full list of ALSA controls, one
needs to toggle the view to "ALSA view", and in that full view, one
clearly sees which controls are used by PA and which are not.
2. ALSA view - no PA controls if PA is not running, and the overview is
categorized and sorted from a ALSA perspective (like in alsamixer).
That would make the main mixer have all you need for controlling your
card.
One could even go further with adding support for jack (jackdbus), and
therefore, also for ffado.
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Re: alsa mixers
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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Re: alsa mixers
On Tue, May 7, 2013 7:08 pm, lukefro...@hushmail.com wrote: > Volti has another feature: you get both the mixer and the tray applet, givng > all the features of the default GNOME sound applet with a far better mixer, The default gnome sound applet must be truly abysmal. On Volti I have 10 channels with two faders all with the same label... some of them are off the screen at any one time so I can't even count to find out which is which. > and working fine with ALSA by itself, with Jack not running and PA not running/not installed. xfce4-mixer works fine this way as well as does qasmixer, while fitting on one screen. > Evejn the media sound up/down keys work, though > they are press and hold rather than multi-press, which is a little counterintuitive. You will hear the sound level change and see the tray applet > reflect the change, though GNOME's overlay won't open to show it. That is hardly a requirement for setting input levels, which is the major use for an alsa mixer. Handy for desktop audio though... which is what pulse is for. desktop audio can be made to work without pulse, but in that case xfce4-mixer can do these things too. (and worked the last time I tried) > > Haven't tested controlling either through it, but I would imagine the master > (which the tray applet controls, set it in "preferences if it does not) would > control ALSA's output just fine with no mattter what is using the sound card, > PA or Jack included. except if you are using something like an ice1712 based audio card, in which case it can be set to control either the left or the right channel but not both. (Pulse has a HW specific profile just to make this work) > The onboard sound on my motherboard does give a wide mixer window, but you can slide it off the left or right of the screen. No matter how wide it is, > you can therefore get to everything. Two and a half screens worth is a bit much... Thats how wide the window is on this machine (remember over 30 faders). You have to move the window carefully or you end up pushing it onto the next workspace :P In my opinion, this alone makes the application broken. > The only real quirks are that you have to drop a script in one of the autostart > directories to start Volti at login, and you can quit it from the bottom of 4 options > on the right click menu on the applet. That could confuse a new user who might > accidently quit their volume control and not know how to restart it (from terminal > or from run dialog). XFCE would have no problem starting it at login, there is a settings dialog for that. I expect the user would only exit it once before learning not to do that :) however it does go in the menu and is not hard to find. > For a pretty GUI around alsamixer, alsamixergui is still out there, I've Ya... but in many ways it is actually harder to use than alsamixer in a terminal. Having to restart to change audio card is not nice either. > kept it > installed since my first audio editing machines for old time's sake. Smaller > sliders, shows EVERYTHING by default. Works no matter what happens to any other program, so long as ALSA is available. When I was last using pulseaudio, > it's claim on the soundcard made alsamixergui show only the master slider, don't > know if that's still the case when running PA. > when pulse is running, it seems to create a "fake" alsa audio card and makes it default. So any alsa mixer (except alsamixer) seems to load that card by default. This is so Pulse can replace alsa for those programs that that only know how to talk with alsa and so that when pulse is not there, the same app will just work with alsa. Volti would be good for most HDA sound apps, I think, but once we start adding the kinds of cards that many of the ubuntustudio users have, it becomes a problem. The problem in many ways is that alsa is not made for as wide a range of cards as there are. some of the alsa drivers that have non-standard features have named them whatever seemed right to the dev at the time. Then the same feature on another card may have been named something else. What does a mixer do with that? A mixer app with profiles would be the best thing. The profile would decide which faders appeared and what they are named. It would decide if a control was input or output. (right now alsa offers both an input and an output fader for both my ADCs and my DACS... 16 faders for 4 channels) I have an old ensoniq... the inputs come with one fader, but that fader can be controlled as the input level with input enable or as an output with mute. But the output has to be unmuted before the input can be enabled... except the mic where the input can be enabled with output muted... but the output level still follows the input level. I would think that a mixer with user settable profiles, where the collection of profiles could be built up over time by users who had the cards would be the best way of doing this. I would like to see all the controls and switches available in t
Re: alsa mixers
Volti has another feature: you get both the mixer and the tray applet, givng all the features of the default GNOME sound applet with a far better mixer, and working fine with ALSA by itself, with Jack not running and PA not running/not installed. Evejn the media sound up/down keys work, though they are press and hold rather than multi-press, which is a little counterintuitive. You will hear the sound level change and see the tray applet reflect the change, though GNOME's overlay won't open to show it. Haven't tested controlling either through it, but I would imagine the master (which the tray applet controls, set it in "preferences if it does not) would control ALSA's output just fine with no mattter what is using the sound card, PA or Jack included. The onboard sound on my motherboard does give a wide mixer window, but you can slide it off the left or right of the screen. No matter how wide it is, you can therefore get to everything. The only real quirks are that you have to drop a script in one of the autostart directories to start Volti at login, and you can quit it from the bottom of 4 options on the right click menu on the applet. That could confuse a new user who might accidently quit their volume control and not know how to restart it (from terminal or from run dialog). For a pretty GUI around alsamixer, alsamixergui is still out there, I've kept it installed since my first audio editing machines for old time's sake. Smaller sliders, shows EVERYTHING by default. Works no matter what happens to any other program, so long as ALSA is available. When I was last using pulseaudio, it's claim on the soundcard made alsamixergui show only the master slider, don't know if that's still the case when running PA. On 05/07/2013 at 9:53 PM, "Len Ovens" wrote: > >On Tue, May 7, 2013 3:15 pm, Len Ovens wrote: > >> Volti: someone has done some fixing on this. Last time I used >it the >> faders were very wide. While they don't go as small as qasmixer, >they do > >Nope, depends on the machine... or really what the most complex >audio card >on the machine is. On a machine with 30 + faders on one of the >sound cards >it makes the window wide enough to fit that many faders even if >the card >it is displaying has less. Pretty much unusable on this machine. > >-- >Len Ovens >www.OvenWerks.net > > >-- >Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list >Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com >Modify settings or unsubscribe at: >https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
Re: alsa mixers
On Tue, May 7, 2013 3:15 pm, Len Ovens wrote: > Volti: someone has done some fixing on this. Last time I used it the > faders were very wide. While they don't go as small as qasmixer, they do Nope, depends on the machine... or really what the most complex audio card on the machine is. On a machine with 30 + faders on one of the sound cards it makes the window wide enough to fit that many faders even if the card it is displaying has less. Pretty much unusable on this machine. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net -- Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
