[pulseaudio-discuss] Gnome volume applet

[Bill Moseley]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 04:11:02PM -0500, Ritesh Kumar wrote:
> The big picture ain't that pretty, isn't it? :)

Eh, no it's not.

And I'm still not even clear in the LTSP environment who is the pulse
client and who is the server. ;)

Let me as a simple question, which maybe you answered in your reply
and I didn't recognize.   On my normal workstations that uses ALSA
both the GNOME volume applet and alsamixer work.

On the LTSP setup, the GNOME applet looks the same but doesn't work,
yet alsamixer seems to know that it should be using pulse.  How does
alsamixer know this yet the applet doesn't?

Also, is this problem not related to Pulse?  The volume control on the
LTSP server isn't suppose to use Pulse to run the hardware volume on
the LTSP thin client, correct?  Rather, it controls  a soft volume
control on the audio stream before it's passed via pulse to the
hardware on the remote client, right?

So the trick is getting the GNOME applet to use a soft volume control
-- which I believe is what you are showing below.

Hum, maybe not:


> If you want a quick solution try adding a device=default in you
> module-alsa-sink configuration. This is not optimal as it layer dmix below
> pulseaudio instead of eliminating it from the pipeline.

And that would be on the LTSP thin client?  I don't have a default.pa
on the LTSP server, only on the client:

    /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/pulse/default.pa

Currently, that module is commented out -- is that expected?

    $ fgrep module-alsa-sink /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/pulse/default.pa
    #load-module module-alsa-sink
    #add-autoload-sink output module-alsa-sink sink_name=output


> What I recommend you do is ditch the default alsa configuration and make
> your own. The first thing to do is to make your own virtual device and add a
> "Master" softvol to it if necessary. Use the following as a guide line...
> use your local ~/.asoundrc if you don't feel like modifying /etc/asound.conf

> pcm.!default { type pulse }
> ctl.!default { type pulse }
> # Create softvol devices for intelHDA.
> # For intelHDA, its "PCM" control controls its default (not used) softvol.
> pcm.intelHDA {
>         type softvol
>         slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
>         control.name "Master"
>         control.card 0
> }
> 
> # It seems we require these dummies as pulseaudio tries to look up mixer
> devices.
> ctl.intelHDA {
>         type hw
>         card 0
> }
> 
> Then use intelHDA or whatever name you use above in your module-alsa-sink
> configuration. Something like module-alsa-sink device=intelHDA

Is "intelHDA" just a name?  That is, I could call it anything?


-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org