Re: regression in HDA functionality

On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, Alexander Leidinger wrote:
> We have /dev/dsp, which points by default to the first registered
> soundcard.
>
> > 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
>
> The default I wrote above, can be changed with a sysctl. You specify
> the device number (0 for pcm0, 1 for pcm1, ...). So except for one
> part (auto), we already have what you suggest.
>
> The difficult part is the "auto". What's the right thing to choose?
> Think a little bit about it, what's right for one person is wrong for
> another one. A person which has everything connected digitally wants
> the digital by default for sure, but a person which has analog and
> digital connected, can not get a mind reading machine to see a
> sensible default. And what about those which have the soundcard
> connected to an amplifier, and the graphic card also offers the HDMI
> sound channel to the screen? Does this person want the sound only via
> the amplifier, or does he want it via the build-in speakers of the
> screen (he may want the normal stuff routed to the screen, but at
> some point turn on the amplifier and use it instead)?

Have an option in rc.conf read by a script that takes devd events and 
does what the user wants.

> > 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.
>
> So everytime I connect an USB Audio device it means I want to switch
> to it? Maybe it's a headset and I only want to make phone calls with
> it (by telling the phone application to use specific devices), but
> for the rest I want to use the already existing sound output.

Why not just allow a user to override it in rc.conf?
Being able to have auto (ie what I plugged in most recently) and fixed 
(manually set it to what you want) would probably cover 90% of cases 
for minimal work.

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
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