[pulseaudio-discuss] Potential module: persistent-sink

[Colin Guthrie]

Hi,

I replied elsewhere in the thread about the first bit :)

'Twas brillig, and Chris Hamilton at 05/12/08 18:34 did gyre and gimble:
> Another unrelated question:
> 
> Is it possible to have a network sink and a local sink synchronized?  Or
> multiple network sinks?  (In all cases, they have been combined using
> module-combine).  I'm running 0.9.10, and use a module-esound-sink
> because the module-tunnel-sink is extremely flaky (immediately get
> buffer underrun complaints, and choppy sound out of the remote system).
>  Using the esound sink, there is a noticeable lag between the two
> systems, which one would think could be at least synchronized.  Any
> feedback on this would be great.

Sadly the "correct" fix here is to make the module-tunnel sink work 
nicer! In theory in 0.9.13+, it should be possibly to dynamically change 
the buffering of the tunnel on the fly to cope with underruns etc. (not 
100% sure if it really needs 0.9.13 here but it certainly fits with the 
glitch-free, watermark level stuff).

The esound protocol does not contain any information about 
timing/latency to the best of my knowledge so it will be very hard to 
get synchronised correctly.

> Something that I would love to see one day (sooner rather than later):
> 
> A virtual 'switchboard' type system for configuring pipes, where
> connections are drawn with the mouse, etc.  This could have a nice
> graphical and intuitive switchboard (with cables, etc) view, and a
> simpler more compact matrix view (inputs on one side, outputs on the
> other, combiners living as both inputs and outputs).  Ideally, this
> would keep information about all past clients (even though they may not
> be presently active), as well as past sinks (even through they may be
> down temporarily).  Status of the sinks/sources could be indicated
> through color.  A 'recursive' behaviour would be nice, wherein if the
> local user had access, they could zoom into the switchboard panel of a
> remote server as well.  Does this sound like something anybody else
> would like to see?  I can easily put together a UI mock-up illustrating
> exactly what I envision...

Please do some mockups. It's important to realise that pulse is not 
jack, and this it's not really meant to be an all singing interconnect 
type app, but IMO this kind of visualisation is quite nice.

I presume this interface would kinda be like a pavucontrol on steroids? 
Viewing remote servers should be easy enough (effectively the same as 
running pavucontrol via "PULSE_SERVER=remote pavucontrol").

Again, (as per my other mail) seeing non-active sinks and apps will not 
currently be supported by the protocol (to the best of my knowledge) so 
to get full feature out of this interface.

> Chris Hamilton
> (a recent but very enthusiastic PulseAudio convert)

Yeah that's what happened to me too :)

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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