From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Lee Revell Subject: Re: CMI8768 patch, softvol mixer slider Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 14:11:48 -0500 Message-ID: <1108840309.10705.6.camel@krustophenia.net> References: <92C0412E07F63549B2A2F2345D3DB515F7D63F@cm-msg-02.cmedia.com.tw> <4216EE28.6040702@gmx.de> <1108799809.9005.3.camel@krustophenia.net> <42178828.2020002@gmx.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <42178828.2020002@gmx.de> Sender: alsa-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net Errors-To: alsa-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: To: t.schorpp@gmx.de Cc: alsa-devel@lists.sourceforge.net List-Id: alsa-devel@alsa-project.org On Sat, 2005-02-19 at 19:40 +0100, thomas schorpp wrote: > > The whole point of alsa-lib is to get > > things like software volume control and mixing and sample rate > > conversion that don't need to be in the kernel out of the kernel. > > who decides on "need"? > > 1. sw engineering reuseability: > > would you provide a base class without a generalizable feature requiring > every subclass implementing it? wheres the need for specialization here? > > 2. the linux audio developers: > > "guys, theres no pcm master to access with the alsa driver on some cards > on the mixers. everone of us must implement it now in our apps, what a > hell work." > > 3. audio professionals and simple end user > > "guys, i heard therere some great apps like ardour and multi-channel > realtime audio available on linux at low cost. lets go and save much > costs, buy this great suse and have fun. ... eh? wheres the pcm slider i > have with windows gone? they cant even provide that? ... so the other > apps cant be much. lets boot windows again and forget this suse..." > > 4. the linux kernel developers? I think you missed my point. There is a PCM slider for cards with no hardware volume control. It's provided by the softvol plugin, which is part of alsa-lib, which lives in userspace. Since it works fine in userspace, there's no reason for it to be in the kernel, other than to provide software volume control for OSS apps using the in-kernel OSS emulation. The OSS API is deprecated, so there's no way the kernel developers will bloat the kernel by letting in software volume control for the sole purpose of supporting a deprecated API. Also keep in mind we are talking about the cheapest of the cheap hardware. They are probably saving a penny or two per board, by wasting everyone's CPU cycles to do volume control in software. The actual fix is to get a real sound card. Lee ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595&alloc_id=14396&op=click