[pulseaudio-discuss] Pavucontrol level meter bug (at least on "Input Devices")

[David Henningsson]

On 08/04/2011 08:22 PM, Maarten Bosmans wrote:
> 2011/8/4 Colin Guthrie<gmane at colin.guthr.ie>:
>> 'Twas brillig, and David Henningsson at 04/08/11 14:21 did gyre and gimble:
>>> Ok, while testing 0.99.1 I seem to have found a bug in the pavucontrol
>>> level meter. Go to the "input devices" tab and notice that the fact that
>>> this tab is open, is not enough to keep the stream alive. E g, start
>>> gnome-volume-control and check the level meter there, it works, and now
>>> the pavucontrol level meter works as well, but as soon as you close
>>> gnome-volume-control (or at least a few seconds after), the recording
>>> stream goes to idle and the level meter stops.
>> This is a feature.... we use the DONT_INHIBIT_SUSPEND flag.
> The flag was added in a patch by me after a discussion "Make
> discoverable PA network sound devices available locally results in
> huge network traffic" on the ml, in Januari.
>
>> I remember at some point someone complained that pavucontrol kept the
>> device open when it shouldn't - can't remember the exact scenario now
>> but there were cases when this was a total pain before.
> The scenerio was that having pavucontrol open on a host with tunnels
> to another host (e.g. 'make available' checked in paprefs) caused a
> lot of network traffic, even if there was no audio playing through the
> tunnels.
>
>> So it's easily "fixed" but I'm not sure we should... but then if memory
>> serves the complaint was about keeping sinks open (for monitors)...
>> keeping the mic open for the vu is probably a good idea as there is
>> usually some degree of background noise etc. and users shouting "test"...
> So probably my patch was a bit to broad. You can look into enabling
> DONT_INHIBIT_AUTO_SUSPEND more intelligently for different
> monitors/sources. Also, it seems that g-v-c can use the flag too at
> some places.

Actually, I don't mind the DONT_INHIBIT_AUTO_SUSPEND feature now that I 
know it's there. I think it would be okay to change the level meter to a 
label saying "This stream is currently idle." instead of just showing 
the latest value and appearing hung-like.

Bonus points for making it configurable though!

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
http://launchpad.net/~diwic