From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 2 09:22:54 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 927D9EB7; Wed, 2 Apr 2014 09:22:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from theravensnest.org (theraven.freebsd.your.org [216.14.102.27]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "theravensnest.org", Issuer "theravensnest.org" (not verified)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3A63BFA0; Wed, 2 Apr 2014 09:22:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.0.100] (cpc14-cmbg15-2-0-cust307.5-4.cable.virginm.net [82.26.1.52]) (authenticated bits=0) by theravensnest.org (8.14.7/8.14.7) with ESMTP id s329Mcn2054303 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO); Wed, 2 Apr 2014 09:22:40 GMT (envelope-from theraven@FreeBSD.org) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 7.2 \(1874\)) Subject: Re: Leaving the Desktop Market From: David Chisnall In-Reply-To: Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 10:22:32 +0100 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: References: <20140401094044.GX44074@e-new.0x20.net> <083e01cf4db9$f8f4e040$eadea0c0$@FreeBSD.org> <20140401174302.GU44074@e-new.0x20.net> <20140401195006.GA1368@tiny-r255948> To: Kevin Oberman X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1874) X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 11:26:44 +0000 Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org, Matthias Apitz , hackers@freebsd.org, dteske@freebsd.org, Jordan Hubbard , "current@freebsd.org" X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 09:22:54 -0000 On 1 Apr 2014, at 23:10, Kevin Oberman wrote: > Audio output is pretty system dependent, but I had little problem = getting > my audio to auto-switch to headphones when I plugged them in. The = setup is > a bit ugly,but I only had to check the available PINs (ugly, ugly) and = set > up stuff once. It just works. If you want my example set-up, I can = post it > somewhere or you can look in the archives for it as I have posted it = in the > past. It would be good to have this in the handbook (and to see what we can do = to improve it). FreeBSD audio typically works out of the box and it's = great when it does[1], but it can be underdocumented black magic to make = it work when it doesn't. For example, I believe it's possible to tell = pcm that when it receives a stereo stream it should redirect the left = channel to the front and rear left, and the right channel to the front = and rear right, but I haven't yet worked out how to do this - I'd have = thought it was the kind of default that we'd want to have. The use case that PulseAudio was [over]designed to fix was plugging in = USB headphones (or connecting a Bluetooth headset) and having existing = audio streams redirected there. This should be possible with the = existing sound stack, but there are some bits of plumbing missing. We = already do in-kernel mixing and resampling, which are the hard bits. = Duplicating streams and redirecting them are trivial by comparison. David [1] Although I had a slightly embarrassing moment when I spent an hour = hunting for docs to tell me how to configure my media centre box do 5.1 = output and then decided to just try it and found it worked out of the = box.=