[gentoo-user] Gnome audio (mixer) question

walt · External Since: Dec 20, 2006 Posts: 27

I'm not sure when this problem started because I seldom need to use
the gnome gui interface to alsamixer (i.e. mixer_applet2).

I've added the gnome "volume-control" applet to my gnome panel for
years, but sometime in the recent past the "mixer" function has
vanished.

When I right-click on the volume-control applet and then on Open
Volume Control, I get the "Sound Preferences" dialog; the same one
I get when I click on the System::Preferences::Sound menu item on
the gnome panel.

In that Sound Preferences dialog I see only the volume control known
as "Master" on alsamixer, even though alsamixer shows several of the
other usual suspects like PCM, CD, Video, etc.

Have any of you gnomes out there got the latest Volume Control applet
to display all of the various controls provided by your sound card?

Thanks!

P.S. If you haven't updated world lately you may not have the latest
gnome-2.26 (stable) updates yet.

walt · External Since: Dec 20, 2006 Posts: 27

On 10/24/2009 06:52 PM, walt wrote:
> ...
> Have any of you gnomes out there got the latest Volume Control applet
> to display all of the various controls provided by your sound card?

By trial-and-error I tracked it down to the pulseaudio USE flag.

Merging gnome-media with that flag breaks gnome-volume-control
most horribly IMO, but OTOH I don't understand pulseaudio, so
maybe I'm wrong.

Any gnomes out there who understand this interaction?

Anyone who can reproduce this 'bug'?

Thanks.

walt · External Since: Dec 20, 2006 Posts: 27

On 10/25/2009 08:19 AM, walt wrote:

> Merging gnome-media with the pulseaudio USE flag breaks
> gnome-volume-control most horribly IMO, but OTOH I don't
> understand pulseaudio, so maybe I'm wrong.

I found the gnome 2.26 upgrade guide, which points to the
pulseaudio documentation.

It seems that pulseaudio has its own mixer control (not
included in gentoo's pulseaudio package) so maybe it does
make sense to remove that function from gnome's volume
control applet.

However, the most important thing I learned is that I have
no use whatever for pulseaudio -- and I doubt that many
other people do, either.

It seems to be a massively complex solution hunting for a
problem. How many of us want/need to play two or more
soundtracks at the same time?

If I'm wrong about this, please correct me. I'd like to
know why all those devs spent so much energy building it.

Thanks.

David · External Since: Jul 18, 2009 Posts: 6

walt wrote:
> On 10/25/2009 08:19 AM, walt wrote:
>
> > Merging gnome-media with the pulseaudio USE flag breaks
> > gnome-volume-control most horribly IMO, but OTOH I don't
> > understand pulseaudio, so maybe I'm wrong.
>
> I found the gnome 2.26 upgrade guide, which points to the
> pulseaudio documentation.
>
> It seems that pulseaudio has its own mixer control (not
> included in gentoo's pulseaudio package) so maybe it does
> make sense to remove that function from gnome's volume
> control applet.
>
> However, the most important thing I learned is that I have
> no use whatever for pulseaudio -- and I doubt that many
> other people do, either.
>
> It seems to be a massively complex solution hunting for a
> problem. How many of us want/need to play two or more
> soundtracks at the same time?
>
> If I'm wrong about this, please correct me. I'd like to
> know why all those devs spent so much energy building it.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
It coming from upstream (red hat-fedora) and Lennart Poettering
You can read some of the reasoning here;
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeaturePulseaudio

The bottom line is we will need to get use to it at some point not sure
when that will be. I did come up with a little guide;
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-789181.html

I have been using it for a while and for the most part it has been fine.

-david

Keith Dart · External Since: Jul 11, 2009 Posts: 5

=== On Sun, 10/25, walt wrote: ===
> If I'm wrong about this, please correct me. I'd like to
> know why all those devs spent so much energy building it.

===

Me too. Wink

I agree with you. It has done nothing but cause problems
for me also. I don't think it provides any functionality that ALSA, or
an ALSA plugin and configuration, can not also do.

-- Keith Dart

--

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Keith Dart <keith.RemoveThis@dartworks.biz>
public key: ID: 19017044
<http://www.dartworks.biz/>
=====================================================================

Peter Weilbacher · External Since: Oct 19, 2005 Posts: 37

On 25.10.2009 18:07, walt wrote:
> On 10/25/2009 08:19 AM, walt wrote:
>
>> Merging gnome-media with the pulseaudio USE flag breaks
>> gnome-volume-control most horribly IMO, but OTOH I don't
>> understand pulseaudio, so maybe I'm wrong.
>
> I found the gnome 2.26 upgrade guide, which points to the
> pulseaudio documentation.
>
> It seems that pulseaudio has its own mixer control (not
> included in gentoo's pulseaudio package) so maybe it does
> make sense to remove that function from gnome's volume
> control applet.

Looking at the pulseaudio documentation it seems to be a very
well-designed system. But there are so many components to it that I
found it very confusing to configure. In fact, after fiddling around
with it for two days, I gave up on that, removed USE=pulseaudio
again, and rebuilt world.
Now I only have the problem that I cannot start the GNOME "Volume
Control" applet any more. When I try I get

Some panel items are no longer available
One or more panel items (also referred to as applets) are
no longer available in the GNOME desktop.

These items will now be removed from your configuration:
• Volume Control
You will not receive this message again.

so I have to go to the full mixer in the menu instead.

My problem was that I never got any sound out of it, with any
application. And I lost all but one mixer slider. With the alsa-based
backend, my system has the peculiarity that it starts up with "Front"
and "Headphone" levels at 100% but muted and Master at 100% (unmuted),
I always have to unmute "Front" before I want any sound. With
pulseaudio active, all but the "Master" slider were gone, so I didn't
have any way to influence the levels on the other components. At
least that's what I am thinking might have been going on, but maybe
I'm wrong.

Peter.

walt · External Since: Dec 20, 2006 Posts: 27

On 10/26/2009 02:10 AM, Peter Weilbacher wrote:
> On 25.10.2009 18:07, walt wrote:

>> It seems that pulseaudio has its own mixer control (not
>> included in gentoo's pulseaudio package) so maybe it does
>> make sense to remove that function from gnome's volume
>> control applet.
>
> Looking at the pulseaudio documentation it seems to be a very
> well-designed system. But there are so many components to it that I
> found it very confusing to configure. In fact, after fiddling around
> with it for two days, I gave up on that, removed USE=pulseaudio
> again, and rebuilt world.
> Now I only have the problem that I cannot start the GNOME "Volume
> Control" applet any more. When I try I get
>
> Some panel items are no longer available
> One or more panel items (also referred to as applets) are
> no longer available in the GNOME desktop.
>
> These items will now be removed from your configuration:
> • Volume Control

You say you rebuilt world. Was gnome-media actually rebuild without
the pulseaudio Use flag? That's where gnome-volume-control comes
from, not from the panel applets package.

BTW, you can also do nicely without the esd USE flag and esound also,
but you'll need to revdep-rebuild after because lots of packages will
break (but they all still work perfectly after the rebuild.)

Peter Weilbacher · External Since: Oct 19, 2005 Posts: 37

On 26.10.2009 14:19, walt wrote:

> You say you rebuilt world. Was gnome-media actually rebuild without
> the pulseaudio Use flag? That's where gnome-volume-control comes
> from, not from the panel applets package.

Yes, I used the usual |emerge -vpDNu world| and that did remerge
gnome-media.

> BTW, you can also do nicely without the esd USE flag and esound also,
> but you'll need to revdep-rebuild after because lots of packages will
> break (but they all still work perfectly after the rebuild.)

Interesting, nice tip. I just finished getting rid of it. It was a bit
of a mess because revdep-rebuild didn't discover a "-lesd" in
libgoffice-0.6.la and hence gnumeric failed to emerge until I finally
removed that by hand. But it's great to have one dependency less. And
sound still seems to work. Smile

Cheers,
Peter.