[pulseaudio-discuss] [PATCH 2/2] volume: Add LFE balance API

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Fri, 2015-09-18 at 15:33 +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
> 
> On 2015-09-18 15:17, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> > On Fri, 2015-09-18 at 14:47 +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
> > > The gnome/unity-control-center UIs have a master volume slider, and
> > > three sub-sliders: balance, fade, and subwoofer. Balance and fade
> > > use PA's set_balance and set_fade APIs accordingly, but the subwoofer
> > > slider sometimes does unintuitive things.
> > > 
> > > In order to make that slider behave better, let's add a LFE balance
> > > API that these volume control UIs can use instead. With this API,
> > > the UI can balance between "no subwoofer" and "only subwoofer" with
> > > "equal balance" in the middle, which would make it more consistent
> > > with the behaviour of the other sliders.
> > > 
> > > BugLink: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=753847
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: David Henningsson <david.henningsson at canonical.com>
> > 
> > As a user, I don't expect a subwoofer slider to mute other channels.
> 
> What you got with my patch (and one patch to -control-center to use the 
> API) is three sliders. They're all adjusting the balance in the sense 
> that in the middle, all channels are loud, and some channels are 
> gradually weakening when you move a slider towards the edge.
> 
> I find that to be the most consistent.

Having thought about this some more, I have become to like your
proposal very much. Either there should be only per-channel volumes, or
only balance sliders that work as you explained. If there were left
-right and rear-front balance sliders plus a pure subwoofer channel
volume, like what I believe Britt and me originally wanted, there would
be no way to make the subwoofer channel louder than the other channels.

So, the idea has a strong ack from me, I didn't review the code yet.

-- 
Tanu