Here are some things I wish pulseaudio could do. I think they make sense :) These are not things I expect next release or all at once for that matter. These all have to do with jacksink/source, jackdbus-detect and pavucontrol, at least from the user POV, the reality may very well be different. I am fully aware that pulseaudio/jack interoperability is not the highest priority and have no disagreement with that. - jacksink/source - relaxed latency compared to jack. I may be wrong, but it seems that pulseaudio gets forced to whatever jack's latency is when connected. This is hard on system resources and it makes an internal audio interface that is only connected to pulseaudio determine the lowest latency a jack device can use. I would suggest that Pulseaudio continue to use it's own latency and jacksink/source add buffering to match that. My thought is that pulseaudio has reasonable latency for phone work already and syncing multi-track recordings is not a normal pulseaudio use anyway. - if the module-jackdbus-detect module is loaded then treat it like a device. In pavucontrol under the Configuration tab there should be an entry for jacksink/source with the same kinds of options: stereo duplex, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 (all with stereo in) and off (off means I like having bridging available, but don't want jacksink/source to be loaded at this time). There is no reason I can see for more channels than desktop apps are likely to use. 12 input channels give a bunch of aux inputs that I don't think any pulse-aware app can use anyway. I think 7.1 might be the max needed for outputs. I don't think there are any desktop apps that expect more than stereo in though (I could be wrong). The one non-standard option I would like to see is auto-default. That is when jacksink/source load they become the default device. Oh and one more :) (this is getting messy) auto connect on or off... thinking about this, I would do one "stereo duplex-no connect" and leave the rest with the default. I think the stereo situation is the only one where no-auto connect makes sense. Would a mono channel save anything system resources wise? I can think of uses for that too. - default migration - I don't know if this is possible. It seems to happen now under some circumstances. If I am streaming to a card and jack steals it the stream is jammed but I can move it to jacksink and it keeps playing. If I set jacksink/source as default and have a stream going there it seems if I stop jack that stream moves to the old default device (or maybe system default) and if I restart jack after that, the stream then moves back to jacksink/source. (Cool!) So what I am suggesting is, if a device gets taken away at the same time jack shows up, assume jack is now that device and shift the stream there. Being able to set jack as default even when not loaded would work for this too, but then keeping a sub-default may be needed too... ie. in the case where system default goes to a card with no speakers. The easiest fix for this (I use it) is to just turn that device off in pavucontrol. I have a card <es1370> that I use only for MIDI, but some people have an internal card that can't be turned off in bios. Anyway, I have been very happy with how pulseaudio has worked for me. The default of two channels works great and I may default to connect=no as well... I use channels 9/10 for input (I have a nice spdif mic pre), though I still use 1 and 2 for outputs. There are already good jack tools for auto connecting for me in this way. I think I have listed my wishes in order of importance, however, I expect changes to happen in order of ease of implementation. I have tried to be clear, but even though English is my first language, explaining things is not my best talent :) Feel free to ask questions. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net
