On Sun, 01.10.06 02:08, Jeff Rush (jeff at taupro.com) wrote: > Greetings. I've been struggling with PulseAudio for a couple of weeks. It > looks cool but odd things don't work, or I don't understand how to do them. > > 1. Using pacmd I try to play a file: > > >>> list-sinks > 1 sink(s) available. > * index: 0 > name: <beeps> > driver: <modules/module-alsa-sink.c> > volume: <0: 100% 1: 100%> > latency: <61405 usec> > monitor_source: <0> > sample spec: <s16le 2ch 44100Hz> > channel map: <front-left,front-right> > owner module: <0> > description: <ALSA PCM on dsp0 (dmix0)> > >>> play-file /var/tmp/blueriver.wav beeps > No sink by that name. > >>> play-file /var/tmp/blueriver.wav 0 > No sink by that name. This is very strange. Could you please paste your default.pa somewhere? BTW: Running pa on dmix is suboptimal. Because dmix latency measurement is broken and pa cannot fix that for you. > 2. Unable to set the volume of a sink: > > >>> set-sink-volume beeps 32768 > Failed to parse volume. > >>> set-sink-volume beeps 50% > Failed to parse volume. The percentage sign shouldn't be there. just pass a value beteween 0 and 0xFFFF. (hexadecimal acepted, btw) I am really surprised by this. Are you using normal "pacmd" to access the server? "set-sink-volume 0 32768" works fine here. > There are no examples of the commands in the docs, so perhaps I need a comma, > quotes or parentheses? Nope, nothing like this is necessary. > 3. The big problem I have is that I want to have multiple audio sinks mapped > to a single ALSA sound card: beeps, speech and jukebox, and I'd like to set > the volume for each differently (the beeps i.e. desktop sound effects are too > loud, but I don't want to turn down the volume across all sinks). > > When I try to use pavucontrol, the "sinks" tab is empty (?) and the > "streams" Which version of pavucontrol are you using? In newer versions you should have a drop-down list to choose the type of sinks to show. Hmm, is it really empty? I mean, above you list the output of "list-sinks" which should be essentially same as the contents of pavucontrol's "Sink" tab. You might have encountered a Gtk redraw bug. > tab only has things on it while they are playing. For desktop sounds, this is > a very short time and I cannot move the mouse and adjust the volume in the > fraction of a second it plays. The desktop sounds are coming in via the > esound protocol, from the Enlightenment window manager. Yepp. This is indeed a problem. I am not really sure how to fix this properly. > When I use module-volume-restore, it doesn't write a record to > ~/.pulse/volume.table for every desktop sound event, only for those things > where I actually managed to change the volume (music and speech). Also it > seems it writes _very specific_ names in those cases, such that you're setting > the volume for a particular sound and not like all desktop beeps. I really > need a volume control on the sink itself. The way you are using PA is not exactly how I intended it to be used. I must acknowledge that there is a point to do what you want to do but right now PA cannot do that for you. I guess a simple module which would allow virtual sinks which are essentially just interfaces to others would make you happy? > 4. There seems to be no way to grab and control the merged output from Pulse > Audio. For example in my case with the three sinks, I'd like to also control > the volume of the trio as one merged sink. I can do so by changing the volume > in the underlying ALSA device to which they all flow, using ALSA tools, but > it seems odd that PulseAudio doesn't provide a mechanism. I've played with > null sinks, *.monitor outputs and such trying to map the pipes to achieve it, > but failed. Yes, PA cannot do this for you right now. To keep pipelines short we currently try not to pass audio through more hops then necessary. But as I said, such a module for "virtual sinks" definitely makes sense to have in the pa tool set. I will add it to our todo list. > 5. Not really within the domain of this list, but we really need to get the > latest Pulse Audio software into the Gentoo ebuilds, for x86 usage. Many of > the cool utilities aren't in there yet. Ask Flameeyes about that, he's our Gentoo guy. > Thanks and PulseAudio looks neat. After reviewing all the other sound > subsystems for Linux, I've come to the conclusion that PulseAudio has the > flexibility, performance/low-latency and feature set (RTP/SDP/RTSP/Rendevous) > to become the standard. Thanks! Lennart -- Lennart Poettering; lennart [at] poettering [dot] net ICQ# 11060553; GPG 0x1A015CC4; http://0pointer.net/lennart/
