Sorting channels

[Trouilliez vincent]

channels are now rearranged in two panels : "Playback" and "Capture".
While I understand this might be improvement for people running $$$ sounds card
and who use all the channels for regular professional audio work... I only need
3 channels. Master, Line-in (for the TV card), and PCM (for everything else).
Problem : PCM is alone, in the Playback panel, with line-in on the other. So I
keep having to switch panels everytime I want to adjust music/MP3 playback, or
TV sound level, when all the channels could easily fit into one single panel and
all be at hand.

People who have hundreds of channels, have the possibility to enable/display
only those that they need, in the Edit>Preferences, it would be great to have
another option, for people who DO NOT need hundreds of channels, to put all
their channels into one pane, or, more genrally, have an extra option in the
preferences menu, to tell what panel they wnat a particular channel to be put
in, so that people can rearragne this in the way that suits them best.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170453: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170453

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> channels are now rearranged in two panels : "Playback" and "Capture".
> While I understand this might be improvement for people running $$$ sounds card
> and who use all the channels for regular professional audio work...

as pointing on the list:
warty: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/attachment.cgi?id=662
hoary: http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-10/images/gvm-full.png

That's not only for "regular professional audio work", this is the standard
situation with most of the user soundcard.
I doubt that the first one is better for standard users.

Could you provide a screenshot of both tab for the alsa and oss mixers ? What
soundcard do you have ?

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

Created an attachment (id=1435)
OSS Playback panel

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

Created an attachment (id=1436)
OSS Capture panel

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

Created an attachment (id=1437)
ALSA Playback panel

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

Created an attachment (id=1438)
ALSA Capture panel

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

> That's not only for "regular professional audio work", this is the standard
> situation with most of the user soundcard.
> I doubt that the first one is better for standard users.

So, if they are standard users hence only need 4 or 5, 6 channels max, they
would probably like to have everything on the same panel as well ?

> Could you provide a screenshot of both tab for the alsa and oss mixers ?

Sure, I attached everything :

- OSS_Playback
- OSS_Capture
- ALSA_Playback
- ALSA_Capture

I notice that "ALSA" does not arrange my channels in the same way as OSS does,
which I think only goes to demonstrate how arbitraty the Playback/Capture split
is ? Hence the need to be able to force it to arrange them the way the user wants.

> What soundcard do you have ?

No sound card as such, just the usual/classic on-board 'AC 97 chip that the
motherboard came with. Nothing fancy really, yet plenty good enough for I ask it
to do... :-)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

(In reply to comment #6)
>
> So, if they are standard users hence only need 4 or 5, 6 channels max, they
> would probably like to have everything on the same panel as well ?

The split between input and output channels makes sense imho.

> I notice that "ALSA" does not arrange my channels in the same way as OSS does,
> which I think only goes to demonstrate how arbitraty the Playback/Capture split
> is ? Hence the need to be able to force it to arrange them the way the user
wants.

No, that's not arbitraty but probably due to a bug, that's why I've asked the
screenshots.

> No sound card as such, just the usual/classic on-board 'AC 97 chip that the
> motherboard came with. Nothing fancy really, yet plenty good enough for I ask it
> to do... :-)

an onboard audio chipset is also a soundcard. Can you get the exact reference
with lspci ?

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

> The split between input and output channels makes sense imho.

Well yes, but the problem is that many channels are used both for playback and
recording.
So for example, for me, "line-in" is considered as playback, because I use it to
"playback" TV sounds, and don't use it to actually record/cpature anything.
the 'CD' channel is also on the Capture panel, despite the rare times I use it,
it's "playback" an audio CD, not record it. Same for the master control, I use
it in conjunction with the other channels to adjust sound playback just right.
But Master is on the Capture panel again.
Only PCM is on the Playback panel. But, say that one day, I want to record sound
from Totem or Rhythmbox or whatever program that uses the PCM channel. Then I
would need to PCM thing to be in the Capture panel as well.
So, most channels have dual-role and are equally at home on both panels, hence
why I thought that having all of them on a the same panel (but of course, only
the one you want/chose to see, not the dozens of channels that the sound card is
capable of), was the best compromise.
Of course, you could alwyas keep a capture or playback panels, for those
channels that DO NOT have a dual purpose. FOr example "Mic" or "Speaker".

> No, that's not arbitraty but probably due to a bug, that's why I've asked the
screenshots.

Ah, sorry, my knowledge of the sound system is so vague (so complex, as others
keep pointing out on the list), that I had no way to figure out that it was a
bug... please open one if appropriate :-)

> > an onboard audio chipset is also a soundcard.

Huuuuu, what do you mean ? A card is a card, a chip is a chip...
The only cards I have in my system ar ethe SCSI controller card, the Ethernet
controller card, and the TV tuner card.
But sorry for being picky, I gathered that over the years, when they started to
put sound chips on mpotherboard, they improperly called it sound "card", as an
extrapolation, tprobably to avoid confusing the user uselessly.... Okay, let's
say I have a card ! ;o)

> Can you get the exact reference with lspci ?

Yuuup, here it is :

0000:00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device
01b0 (rev c2)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce Audio (rev c2)

Ooops, Mea culpa ! ;-) It appears I don't even have a stand alone sound chip
either ! It's built into the nForce chipset...
the user manual of the motherboard does state that it is AC '97 2.1 compatible,
though, so I was only half wrong ;o)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

(In reply to comment #8)

> So for example, for me, "line-in" is considered as playback, because I use it to
> "playback" TV sounds, and don't use it to actually record/cpature anything.

as indicated in the name "line-in" is an input for the sound card ...

> So, most channels have dual-role and are equally at home on both panels, hence
> why I thought that having all of them on a the same panel (but of course, only
> the one you want/chose to see, not the dozens of channels that the sound card is
> capable of), was the best compromise.

I'll ping upstream about this, but the possibility to customize tabs is not easy
to do without complicating the UI and the code.
BTW I'm not sure than your usecase is the standard one. The app should act on
the right volume level (ie: the gnome applet on the master volume, the cd player
on the CD one, a TV viewer on the line use for the TV, etc).

 > But sorry for being picky, I gathered that over the years, when they started to
> put sound chips on mpotherboard, they improperly called it sound "card", as an
> extrapolation, tprobably to avoid confusing the user uselessly.... Okay, let's
> say I have a card ! ;o)

We get enough bug in bugzilla to not start playing with the words used. When I
ask for the card that's for the chip/device/whatever you call that. I'm sure
than if I use "chip" some user will ask what a chip is.

> 0000:00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device
> 01b0 (rev c2)
> 0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce Audio (rev c2)
>
> Ooops, Mea culpa ! ;-) It appears I don't even have a stand alone sound chip
> either ! It's built into the nForce chipset...

thanks, now I've enough informations to talk with the upstreams about the issue.

[Trouilliez vincent (vincent-trouilliez-modulonet)]

> as indicated in the name "line-in" is an input for the sound card ...

Yes, from a technical point of view, it makes sense. But I thought that the
purpose of a GUI was to be user-centric and let the user interface with H/W in
ways that make most sense to him, not the H/W... it's the guy behind the
Keyboard that needs to get work done with the machine, not the sound card ;o)

>I'll ping upstream about this, but the possibility to customize tabs is not easy
> to do without complicating the UI and the code.

Well, sure. I didn't mean that it was easy, and I hardly expect it to be done
for Hoary. It's a feature request, which needs to be discussed and can take some
time and effort to implement, unlike bugs, that need sorting asap.

> BTW I'm not sure than your usecase is the standard one.

Definitely !! ;o) That's why I am happy to leave the two panel things as
default, and only want the channel sorting mechanism to be available as an
option, even an obscure one, in Gconf or something. As long as the feature is
there available somewhere, it's all that matters.

> The app should act on the right volume level (ie: the gnome applet on the
master volume, the cd player
> on the CD one, a TV viewer on the line use for the TV, etc).

Yes, definitely. The problem is that the volume control in Rhythmbox and Totem,
don't work well on my machine. For some reason, it doesn't react instantly,
there is always a lag of second or so, it's not reponsive - wheras if I use the
volume mixer, every works instantly, no lag. XMMS volume control works fine
too, but I try to use Totem instead as it's a Gnome app so looks better on the
desktop.
I have not used Gnome's CD player for a while, now that I have rippe dall my
Cd's with Rhythm box, but IIRC the volume control worked fine

I don't know why Totem and Rhythmbox are have this responsivness problem, which
also affectr all their other controls : stop, next/previous, pause etc. None of
the control react instantly. I posted about that ages ago on the list, but noone
answered. So either everyone is happy with that, or I am the only one
experiencing this.
But, if that's not just me and it's a fact, then, assuming they can fix it
completely, I will happily stop using the volume mixer, as it will only make the
dekstop cleaner/more tidy :o)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

*** Bug 12147 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I've opened a bug upstream about this:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170453