You can not select audio hardware in Empathy for sip/ekiga calls

[Dave Morley]

Binary package hint: empathy

I have a usb handset attached to my keyboard and I can't select to use it as there is no interface to do this.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: empathy 2.26.1-1ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy
Tags: ubuntu-unr
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Olivier Le Thanh Duong (olethanh)]

You should be able to set this in the GNOME Sound preference.

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

You can specify the default sound device in sound preferences... what if you want your VoIP calls to be on a device other than the default.

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

I just tried to find a way to achieve this in Natty, and I can't... I have an on-board sound card connected to speakers, and a separate USB headset used for Skype/SIP and various other VoIP software like Mumble... You can change the input device for an application once it's running using Pulse Audio Volume Control, (but not sound preferences)... and you can change the default input and output device for the system in the gnome preferences... but not on a per application basis.

There really needs to be a way to do it in Empathy, and if I'm not understanding what is required to have Empathy open automatically when I log on, ring on the speaker, and have the VoIP call on the headset... then the UI needs to be improved.... but I'm fairly sure there is no way to do it.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the stable release - Oneiric Ocelot. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for empathy (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Christian Gramsch (chrvst0an)]

The bug is expired, but the problem is still existing in all current releases. This bug is not incomplete. You could consider it being a feature-request, but it is just a must-hav-feature for any VoIP-client and so VoIP-integration is absolutely useless without that function. There is no way to choose which audio-device shall be used for any VoIP-communication in Empathy.