[pulseaudio-tickets] [Bug 62588] It should be possible to enable remixing only between mono and non-mono

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62588

--- Comment #6 from Alexander E. Patrakov <patrakov at gmail.com> ---
Thanks for the patch. I have not tested it yet, but the added code looks
sensible - assuming that the "remix only between mono and non-mono" is indeed
the setting which is needed. Which is actually up to discussion, and I am
afraid of proliferation of settings that end up being insufficient anyway.

My own opinion about the whole remixing issue is below.

Some people want stereo sources to be upmixed to their 5.1 speakers. The
motivation seems to be that they actively object to unused output channels.
That's the group for which the default remixing rules (which protect both
against unused outputs and unused inputs) are fine.

Other people don't want stereo sources to be upmixed to 5.1. The motivation is
that such upmixing often destroys pin-point spatial localization of musical
instruments in the composition, i.e. adds unwanted ambience. However, their
needs are misinterpreted, as if they were saying that they don't want any
remixing at all.

And of course, everyone wants to use VoIP and films with 5.1 soundtracks (that
often have important information in center and rear channels) on headphones.

I think that "remix mono only" formulation captures a subset of the problem.
The real problem is that input channels are lost, and "mono source" is just an
important special case.

In other words, my opinion is that two modes should exist:

1. The current one, equivalent to enable-remixing = yes. It avoids both unused
inputs and unused outputs.

2. A new one, to be used instead of the current enable-remixing = no (because
the only use case for this seems to be for speaker calibration tools, which
should request this via the API). It should avoid unused inputs, but should not
try to connect "something" to otherwise-unused outputs.

As for the opposition mentioned in the original report, I think it won't apply
to this new proposal. Upmixing is either enabled or disabled, no "no, except
sometimes yes". Downmixing is always enabled.

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