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Idea #14368: Easy audio settings good audio hardver support

bug This idea is a duplicate of Idea #14682: Unify sound drivers and the sound api.
Written by zsolt320i the 13 Oct 08 at 16:59. Category: Multimedia. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
Hy,

at this moment is very hard to configure the audio settings, because there are several possibilities what you can choose:
alsa, pulse, oss, and the audio chipsets in my case NVIDIA CK 804 - IEC 958, Nvidia NVIDIA CK 804.
So in my case 5 possibilities to chose the right mode for audio settings.
But from this five possibility none of them are good:
- alsa: you can play more then 1 audio file in paralel, but you can not use dolby and dts, you can not change the audio volume from the audio or video players (I'm using optical connection between my computer and my amplifier)
- pulse: you can not run more audio files in parallel, you can not play dts, ad dolby, you can change the audio volume from the player
- oss dts and dolby is working but you can not play more audio files in parallel, and you can not change the voulme form the player
- NVIDIA ....IEC 958 i don't know what is for.
- NVIDIA .... i don't know what is for.

So actually we have a lot audio manager and all of them are just partialy usable for a general user for general PC using: game, music, movie, applications.
My suggestion is to make just one audio manager from five but this should be easy to configure, and should work easily in all situation!
(If you are not able to write the proper software for all chipset than lets implement the same situation as at the video cards: the chipset maker should provide the driver).
If you are voting with minus pls explain, because I do not understand why some people do not want to have just one strong audio manager instead of 5 which are good for nothing!


Tags: audio

11
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closed
Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #14368
Written by zsolt320i the 13 Oct 08 at 16:59.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #14368 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!

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Eldmannen wrote on the 14 Oct 08 at 10:30
A quick search on Wikipedia shows that IEC 958 is S/PDIF.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_958

zsolt320i wrote on the 15 Oct 08 at 16:36
ok, thanks for the info but:
i do not see there any solution to my problem, and even if there would be the solution it wouldn't solve in general the Ubuntu sound card problem!
All the sound card should work in full-duplex + SPDIF, and in the all situation, for example in the flash player.

Auzy wrote on the 15 Oct 08 at 23:29
I think I need to reiterate again, that we currently have no legal open source means of allowing spdif to work properly...

Because for more then 2 channels, you require Dolby Digital or DTS, both which require licencing (and cant be open sourced). And this will get worse, because the longer we wait to do something about it, the longer until #.1 optical sound works in linux. In fact, the only solution at the moment is to use proprietary drivers.

So vote for Idea #6148: Make 4.1 (and more) sound over optical cable work better .The problem is that we are sitting around saying its our job to make one, but the only companies (such as toshiba/sony/etc) would only make an encrypted BS one that requires licencing (and hence be closed source).

This is one of those fundamental (low level) ideas that are required, but are often overlooked over smaller, high level ideas such as adding a feature to an application, and only affects one application.

And the longer it takes for fundamental ideas such as this to be addressed, the longer before Linux is in a position to become peoples primary OS.

zsolt320i wrote on the 16 Oct 08 at 16:48
Then why the SPDIF is working with OSS?

juwuntu wrote on the 17 Oct 08 at 02:49
I think the audio and video are a little rough around the edges. For example I can't listen to multiple audio sources at the sametime. Like a dvd and youtube video. Windows can do this because it has a unified call structure with directx. It would be make things a lot less buggy.

Auzy wrote on the 17 Oct 08 at 07:40
Zsolt SPDIF will always work with 2channel sound. But if you want 6 channel sound, you need DTS or Dolby digital to pass it to the decoder. And we cant support that.

Thats why my idea is so important, so that people stop making speakers we CANT support without closed source drivers


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