Re: regression in HDA functionality

Daniel O'Connor wrote:
> It seems that a lot of new systems now have multiple sound outputs 
> (because they use HDA) so there needs to be some way to elect a default 
> sound output (override by sysctl of course :)
>
> eg selecting the HDMI output is pointless if there is no HDMI link 
> active (can you detect HDMI status?)
>   

Hi all,
I'm not a dev, but may have an idea.

As i understand, the problem is that with the new patch, more devices
are detected which changes the numbering of the pcm devices, thus
out-of-the-box sound output does not (always) work.

Maybe a solution would be to *always* register pcm0, so it becomes the
default device. This device is not a real device but rather a virtual
device like a wrapper/link to one of the other "real" pcm devices
starting with pcm1. An algoritm could select which device pcm0 points
to, and be changeable in sysctl, defaulting to "auto" or something. The
auto setting could even be extended to change default device if
situation changes, like a new USB Audio device is plugged in or the
headphones-output is used. It might be hard to correctly predict the
desired behavior for everyone, but getting default audio output (front
speakers; stereo) to work out-of-the-box would be great.

As a sidenote i'd like to comment on Alexander Motin's work, and Joel
Dahl's comments. What you have here is a good example of the different
viewpoints between developers and end-consumers. Alexander Motin's work
is not flawed, its just missing a feature. A feature that makes sure
that out-of-the-box sound output "just works". Which may be crucial to
new users adopting FreeBSD who might one day be a FreeBSD kernel
developer. As a coder, you know your way around, you know what places to
check when something doesn't work. As an end-user, even a trivial
setting in sysctl may take a long time to lookup and fix, or the user
will simply abandon it or abandon FreeBSD altogether. We want to
encourange users to try FreeBSD and see its beauty. As a developer it's
always a challenge to meet the end-users expectations. That's why there
should be a 'end-user feedback' phase, for example when commited to
-STABLE. That's where these issues may arise which are very important
for end-users, but may look trivial to devs and thus overlooked.

Just thought about sharing my thoughts, and Alexander Motin thanks a lot
for your work. It's highly appreciated! I hope that with some additional
functionality,  which chooses default output, everyone including the
most novice end-users will be very pleased!

Kind regards,
Veronica