[pulseaudio-discuss] [RFC] Alsa UCM integration.

[Margarita Olaya]

Hi Tanu,

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 2:07 AM, Tanu Kaskinen <tanuk at iki.fi> wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-02-25 at 14:09 -0600, Margarita Olaya wrote:
>> > Make sense.
>> > But I am not sure the profiles as defined today in PulseAudio can work
>> > with modifiers. What we discussed yesterday is that when a profile is
>> > selected then you would set the UCM verb and know about all possible
>> > sinks. We would need additional logic to have profile modifiers, or we
>> > would need extra profiles to represent all possible combinations
>> > (speech, speech+tone, speech+music, etc).
>>
>> The initial idea is to use the UCM data to generate the card profiles,
>> then when the stream is open PA will use his method to select the
>> profile and set the verb. e.g when UCM is present: profile = verb.
>>
>> In the UCM module the data is store in a proplist per verb, the
>> proplist has the following info:
>>         PA_PROP_UCM_SINK ->      "PlaybackPCM"
>>         PA_PROP_UCM_SOURCE ->         "CapturePCM"
>>         PA_PROP_UCM_PLAYBACK_VOLUME ->  "PlaybackVolume"
>>         PA_PROP_UCM_PLAYBACK_SWITCH -> "PlaybackSwitch"
>>         PA_PROP_UCM_CAPTURE_VOLUME ->  "CaptureVolume"
>>         PA_PROP_UCM_CAPTURE_SWITCH -> "CaptureSwitch"
>>         PA_PROP_UCM_QOS -> "TQ"
>
> This means that there's only one sink and source per verb. That's
> probably ok, but if profile = verb, then this also means that there's
> only one sink and source per profile.

Yes, this correct.

>That makes it impossible to have
> two verbs (or is it verb+modifier in UCM speak?) active at the same time
> on one card.
>

A modifier is a complement to the verb, there are linked e.g you can
not set a modifier if the corresponding verb has not been set. A
modifier is like an extension of the verb.

> I don't know what would be the right solution to this problem. I don't
> know enough about UCM concepts even to try to propose any solution. Is
> there any documentation?
>

You can find some info at http://www.slimlogic.co.uk/?p=40, the link
to the sample files is not working but It will be fixed asap.

>> plus the list of devices e.g headphone, headset and modifiers e.g
>> "play tone", "play music", etc.
>
> I thought verbs were the concept for abstract devices, but apparently I
> was wrong. Are verbs then stream types? If they are, I think Pulseaudio
> shouldn't create profiles based on verbs. The profiles should be created
> based on the devices. You mention headphone and headset as examples of
> devices - do they also have the same set of properties defined by UCM,
> that is, playback PCM, capture PCM, and mixer element names for volume
> and mute?
>
A verb is an audio configuration for a determined use case, so it is
mainly a group of ALSA kcontrols plus some useful information to
configure the audio when a stream is opened.

Lets say that you want to listen music in cardX, you need to set the
following controls in order to configure your hardware
        cset name='Handsfree Playback Volume' 15
        cset name='HF Left Playback' 1
        cset name='HF Right Playback' 1
        cset name='DL2 Mixer Multimedia' 1
        cset name='DL2 Media Playback Volume' 130

you want also specify what PCM will be used for listening music
        PlaybackPCM "hw:0"

you know that you can use two devices with this configuration, headset
and handsfree then you have:
SectionDevice"Headset".0
SectionDevice."Headphones".0

Also, it is posible that a tone be played simultaneously so you will
need to set two more controls, so you have modifier of the use case.
       cset name='DL2 Mixer Tones' 1
       cset name='DL2 Tones Playback Volume' 130

All this info will form a verb e.g "HiFi"

I hope I'm providing a good example, otherwise let me know.

Regards,
Margarita


> --
> Tanu
>
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