I am going to bring this question to this mail list as I think it is
more apropos to discuss it here...
I have just been through a proverbial nightmare trying to configure
sound on my system and getting some of the various tools to work. Am
running under SuSE11.2 x86_64, KDE 4.4.2. I will admit up front I am NOT
a Linux guru but I am enough of a software engineer to recognize an
overly complex architecture when I see one.
In all of my wanderings around the internet and maillists, I have
discovered there as so many different layers, tools and configuration
requirements that I have got to wonder if there is any sort of overall
sound system-architecture vision in place and a GUI guide for users,
being developed, to follow. We have got LAYERS and LAYERS of ALSA,
ESOUND, JACK, OSS, ESD, aRTs, PULSEAUDIO, GSTREAMER, PHONON and tools
like XINE, KAFFEINE, MYTHTV and MPLAYER which go off in their own
directions... codecs to locate... I mean seriously folks, for a user to
set up and configure a sound system this is getting out of control! How
to choose? What to choose? What and how to configure? What to install?
How to hook up and link together? And NO this is far from an automated
process of any sort, and NO it is NOT transparent to a user! I KNOW I
just went through hell just trying to get Amarok to play (and XINE and
KAFFEINE as well) along with the projectM-pulseaudio visualization tool..
Just to cite my latest headache as an example, (and this was just one of
many I had!!!) I found that running projectM-pulseaudio, which is
suppose to connect to the pulseaudio sound server, randomly chooses
which sound device on my system as its "connectHelper". (I had two, one
of which was actually DISABLED in YaST but apparently that has no effect
on projectM-pulseaudio!!) And projectM often chose the disabled sound
device which left it unresponsive to sound output from any of the other
applications.
Here is another - I discovered that XINE and KMIX were each acting as if
they had control over the master volume level setting! I had a horrible
time tracking down why KAFFIENE was not playing anything until I
happened on and installed the XINE-GUI application and within it I
discovered that it too had a sense of volume control. When I turned it
up, KAFFIENE started working fine! It was as if XINE and KMIX were in a
series connection too because once I turned up the volume level in
XINE-GUI I could also control the volume level with KMIX! IMHO this is a
horrid architectural flaw and can cause users endless amounts of grief
trying to figure out why something like KAFFIENE is not working for
them. One and ONLY one master volume level control should be
allowed/active at a time per sound device, but this sort of error arises
when no one is overseeing the overall sound architecture. Same goes for
Mute controls, another really nasty problem I had tracking down in KMIX...
I have no idea how to track down where such a problem really lies and
what I must do to configure things correctly. YaST? PulseAudio?
ProjectM? Is this a bug or is something misconfigured? Especially given
this extremely complex sound architecture, how do I differentiate? Very
few of the application GUI setup tools come with much in the way of
guiding me to a solution and none are presenting me with a clear picture
of just how everything works together with confidence building test
procedures. The KDE Systems Settings for Multimedia does not present
very many options either , with little guidance, and I even noted the
loss of the old ALSA configuration tool. I suspect some architect(s) is
trying to simplify what a user has to configure, but hiding
configuration options does not allow a GUI to guide a user to a
solution. It only makes it harder to find one when the GUI fails to
achieve a satisfactory result. The designer(s) of the KDE Systems
Settings GUI are correct in believing that it is not a good idea to
simply offer all configuration options in a flat view either, but a well
design GUI will guide a user to properly apply and set configurations
options as needed until a satisfactory result can be achieved for that
user's purposes.
Websites I visited give me a rather complicated picture (probably
outdated too in most cases) of their own perspective of the sound
architecture but nowhere am I ever presented with a clear picture of how
all these different components actually work and/or connect/integrate
together and what applications use them, how and how to configure....
Is there any hope in the near future that this will get simpler and
easier for us poor audiophiles? Will appreciate hearing thoughts and NO
I am not intending to throw rocks... Just that if I had such a hard
time, I got to wonder how others are fairing and I think providing
feedback and starting discussions is useful to engineers...
Marc...
