Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:07:29 +0200 From: "fluffles.net" <bsd@fluffles.net> To: Daniel O'Connor <doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Cc: Alexander Motin <mav@freebsd.org>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Joel Dahl <joel@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: regression in HDA functionality Message-ID: <48E9AB21.1010203@fluffles.net> In-Reply-To: <200810030945.00843.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> References: <1222892584.00020319.1222880402@10.7.7.3> <48E54290.5010600@FreeBSD.org> <48E54B75.3010307@FreeBSD.org> <200810030945.00843.doconnor@gsoft.com.au>
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Daniel O'Connor wrote: > It seems that a lot of new systems now have multiple sound outputs > (because they use HDA) so there needs to be some way to elect a default > sound output (override by sysctl of course :) > > eg selecting the HDMI output is pointless if there is no HDMI link > active (can you detect HDMI status?) > Hi all, I'm not a dev, but may have an idea. As i understand, the problem is that with the new patch, more devices are detected which changes the numbering of the pcm devices, thus out-of-the-box sound output does not (always) work. Maybe a solution would be to *always* register pcm0, so it becomes the default device. This device is not a real device but rather a virtual device like a wrapper/link to one of the other "real" pcm devices starting with pcm1. An algoritm could select which device pcm0 points to, and be changeable in sysctl, defaulting to "auto" or something. The auto setting could even be extended to change default device if situation changes, like a new USB Audio device is plugged in or the headphones-output is used. It might be hard to correctly predict the desired behavior for everyone, but getting default audio output (front speakers; stereo) to work out-of-the-box would be great. As a sidenote i'd like to comment on Alexander Motin's work, and Joel Dahl's comments. What you have here is a good example of the different viewpoints between developers and end-consumers. Alexander Motin's work is not flawed, its just missing a feature. A feature that makes sure that out-of-the-box sound output "just works". Which may be crucial to new users adopting FreeBSD who might one day be a FreeBSD kernel developer. As a coder, you know your way around, you know what places to check when something doesn't work. As an end-user, even a trivial setting in sysctl may take a long time to lookup and fix, or the user will simply abandon it or abandon FreeBSD altogether. We want to encourange users to try FreeBSD and see its beauty. As a developer it's always a challenge to meet the end-users expectations. That's why there should be a 'end-user feedback' phase, for example when commited to -STABLE. That's where these issues may arise which are very important for end-users, but may look trivial to devs and thus overlooked. Just thought about sharing my thoughts, and Alexander Motin thanks a lot for your work. It's highly appreciated! I hope that with some additional functionality, which chooses default output, everyone including the most novice end-users will be very pleased! Kind regards, Veronica
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