[pulseaudio-discuss] No volume control for audio from java applet in browser

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

2013/7/1 Tanu Kaskinen <tanu.kaskinen at linux.intel.com>:

> I'm not familiar with Windows myself, but IIRC the flat volume feature
> was inspired by Windows' volume handling. Am I totally mistaken, and
> Windows always caps the stream absolute volume to whatever the device
> volume is set to?

The feature was copied all wrong.

The DirectSound API (i.e. the one that one can use from inside
sound-producing applications) accepts only relative stream volumes and
does not remember them automatically. There is no support for
amplification, see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/microsoft.directx_sdk.idirectsoundbuffer8.idirectsoundbuffer8.setvolume(v=vs.85).aspx
, and I'd expect such amplification feature (if added to any sane
audio API) to clip or soft-clip too-loud sounds. Yes I know that
DirectSound is obsolete, but that's what I have contributed Wine
patches to :)

I don't know whether there is a special Windows 7 specific API for
mixer programs, however, I won't be surprised if relative volumes are
converted to/from absolute values on display and on slider drag in the
default mixer application. From inside Windows programs, the internal
mixer (if any) displays relative volume. You can easily check that
using Windows Media Player inside a Windows 7 virtual machine.

> While I think applications never have a valid reason to set the volume
> to 100% without the user requesting it, I do agree that 1a is not a good
> default. I also have some reservations about 1b, because the required
> synchronization between hardware and software volume doesn't always work
> reliably, and never will. 1b is a nice thing to have when the
> synchronization works, though.
>
> We currently have three maintainers, out of which two (me and David) are
> against flat volumes, so perhaps it's time to change the default.

Point taken.

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov