[pulseaudio-discuss] [RFC] disabling monitor source patch

[pl bossart]

>> As part of the passthrough/compressed data support in PulseAudio, we
>> need to disable monitoring. The main use of monitoring is to build
>> peakmeters to show volume information, and that just doesn't make
>> sense for compressed raw data....
>
> I have also been using it several times to record things as streaming music,
> skype conversations etc. So I would say that the peak meters are not the
> only main usage of monitoring.
>
> Also, we always have a sink and a source, because of module-auto-sink that
> adds a null sink (and a monitor of that) if no sinks exists. If we end up
> having no sources at all, would that open up a can of worms?
>
> I would say to go with keeping the monitoring source - either decode it,
> leave the raw data as it is, or write zeroes, whatever we conclude is the
> best way to go.

Just to be clear, what I am proposing is to disable monitoring sources
only for the case where a sink supports compressed data. Null sink
doesn't so there's no change of functionality.
You could push silence instead, but that's a pretty much a waste of
resources; I don't see any need for monitoring for compressed data at
all for a pass-through mode... If you need to decode, it has to be
done upstream.
-Pierre