On 2011-06-20 12:05, Colin Guthrie wrote: > 'Twas brillig, and David Henningsson at 20/06/11 10:13 did gyre and gimble: >> On 2011-06-20 10:31, Colin Guthrie wrote: >>> Interesting. Smells like someone is patching something somewhere then. >>> Like I say I don't have this problem here - volume keys will have their >>> upper limit @100% >>> >>> I'd still be generally in favour of limiting the keys to 100% but >>> ultimately it's up to the Dekstop environments to decide what they think >>> is best. >>> >>> So I'd get in touch with the relevant gnome people and ask the question: >>> Should the keys limit the volume to 0dB, but with the UI allowing up to >>> +11dB? >> >> We'll just add a compressor plugin, so everything sounds louder ;-) > > Hehe! > >> Just kidding. Anyway, if I were a UI designer and got that proposal, I >> would probably scratch my head and wonder why the PulseAudio folks >> couldn't decide on one maximum volume only... > > Well it's about use case. In a typical setup, the user shouldn't *have* > to go above PA_VOLUME_NORM. They may need to in some special cases and > we don't want to make those special cases too tricky to enable, but we > don't want people accidentally enabling them either as it leads to > questions exactly like the one asked in this thread. > > So we need to make some kind of compromise. > > In my mind I see three possible solutions: > 1. Just stick to 0dB for the media keys handling, but handle things > gracefully if the volume is>0dB (e.g. volume up == noop, volume down = > step down normal amount (i.e. don't reset to 0dB-step immediately on > first press). > > 2. Just go up to +11dB and don't do anything different. Accept that > upstream will get several death threats (or rather "why does PA do this? > It's dump, you guys are idiots" emails). > > 3. Allow going up to 0dB via key repeats, but require a stall and > second-press of the buttons to get>0dB, change the OSD to red or some > other warning colour to let the user know they are overdriving and > provide other UI hints in e.g. dock volume controls that this is the > case and give the user enough feedback to be able to reset it if needs be. 4. In the UI, add a checkbox saying "Give me 11 dB more!" (or "Ultra PulseAudio(R) Boost(TM)" ;-) ) and if enabled, both the UI and the media keys go up to +11 dB. That would at least keep the two consistent. Not to say that is the best solution, I know if we keep adding everybody's favorite control the end result will not be optimal either :-) > 1. is clearly the simplest, 2, clearly sucks, 3 might be the most > holistic solution. Everyone will likely have a different opinion on what > is best. Perhaps this is something you can add in to the usability study > with jack detection and expectations thereof? Actually it was Conor who took on the usability study, but maybe it isn't such a bad idea. Conor, what do you think? -- David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd. http://launchpad.net/~diwic
