[pulseaudio-discuss] [Feature] let specific stream to fully control sample rate of a sink. Possible?

[edio]

Hello.

Afaik, PulseAudio supports 2 sample rates: primary and alternate. The 
idea is that if the only stream playing through a sink has sample rate, 
that does not match primary but matches alternate sample rate, then 
PulseAudio will switch the sink to alternate sample rate to avoid 
resampling.

This is already a great improvement over what ALSA's dmix offered us for 
years. Can we go further?

Do you think the following use case is technically possible to implement?

- user defines the name of a stream, say "primary stream"
- if "primary stream" is active, PulseAudio will try to configure sink, 
that is used to play "primary stream" to have the same sample rate as 
primary stream has. All other streams, if active, will be resampled
- if "primary stream" is not active, then PulseAudio can do whatever it 
is doing right now

This will be a great feature for home audiophile setups. Right now, to 
play music without resampling one has to use bare ALSA and let player to 
own the sound card. If user wants to use the same set of speakers for 
something else than music, then the only way is to use a different sound 
card for that and then mix signals from both soundcards using analog mixer.

Regards,
Dmytro