[pulseaudio-discuss] Per-app flat volume adjustment is highly unintuitive, if mathematically consistent.

[Lennart Poettering]

On Tue, 26.05.09 21:25, Jud Craft (craftjml at gmail.com) wrote:

> > So, reading these as linear factors. If X is 0.75 and Y is 0.8, then,
> > yes, the virtual sink volume and hence the hw volume control is
> > configured to 0.8, which is then shown in the UI on the volume slider
> > of the sink. As I said the internally applied volume for stream B will
> > then be 1.0, let's call that Y'. The internally applied volume X' for
> > stream A will be X/Y:
> >
> > The final output volume of B will be Y' * Y = 1.0 * Y = Y = .8
> >
> > The final output volume of A will be X' * X = (X/Y) * Y = X = .75
> >
> > Which is exactly what was requested.
> >
> > if this is not clear to you, please read my last mail again.
> >
> 
> That does make sense.  But you missed a part of my example -- I don't
> want my system playing at full volume.  I want it playing at 80%
> (whatever that means -- let Pulse and Vista figure that out), and I
> want A playing at 75% of that, and B playing at 80% of that.

He, then you don't want the flat vol logic.

But really, *why* do you want this? Why do you want your highest
stream volume considerably lower than the device volume? That 20%
headroom is simply something you lose then. Your sound card has a 16
bit DAC. But that way you use it as 15 bit dac only.

> Serious.  There was only one way to scale volume values to me.  I
> assumed that even in non-flat volume mode, Pulse behaved the same way
> as Vista.  I just figured that Vista had the stupidity to scale all of
> my volume meters relative to the master volume meter, just to make me
> think extra hard.

You know, this sounds more like a problem of "didn't use to be like
this, must be bad" than serious cricism. 

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net
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