Is xfce4-mixer detecting the default audio card (pulseaudio) in F18?

[Sergio Cipolla]

Hi.
xfce4-mixer 4.10 wasn't giving me a choice to use the 'default' card 
(pulseaudio). It used to in F17.
I even downgraded to v. 4.8 but it just shows the alsa card.
Of course even alsamixer shows the default pulseaudio card and pnmixer too.

I don't understand about this but it seems xfce4-mixer is a gstreamer 
thing and maybe isn't supposed to work like alsamixer.
I have just the basics for gstreamer as I use vlc/deadbeef which don't 
need it so it's here mostly because of webkitgtk, qt-config etc., these 
unrelated stuff.

$ yum list installed *gstreamer*
gstreamer.i686                        0.10.36-2.fc18          @fedora 

gstreamer-plugins-base.i686           0.10.36-3.fc18          @fedora 

gstreamer-tools.i686                  0.10.36-2.fc18          @fedora 

gstreamer1.i686                       1.0.2-1.fc18 
@updates-testing
gstreamer1-plugins-base.i686          1.0.2-1.fc18 
@updates-testing

It still looks like there's some bug somewhere as xfce4-mixer should 
detect the default card.

Thoughts?

[Martin Sourada]

Hi Sergio,


On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:25:44 -0200 
Sergio wrote:

>  Hi.
>  xfce4-mixer 4.10 wasn't giving me a choice to use the 'default' card 
>  (pulseaudio). It used to in F17.
>  I even downgraded to v. 4.8 but it just shows the alsa card.
>  Of course even alsamixer shows the default pulseaudio card and
>  pnmixer too.
>   
It never had the option to use 'default' card as long as I remember.
And recently the panel applet also seem to have dropped the option to
start pavucontrol on click (or I'm blind) so I had to drop it in favour
of the ugly gnome volume applet which is currently the only option that
works without issues with external usb audio card even after suspend:
first of all the default audio card gets reset to the internal one (so
I need quick access to PA settings to change the default) after suspend
and second, xfce4-mixer applet is not able to change volume of the
external audio card after suspend.

>  It still looks like there's some bug somewhere as xfce4-mixer
> should 
>  detect the default card. 
More like a missing feature than bug, I think.

Martin

[Sergio Cipolla]

On 11/13/2012 07:24 PM, Martin Sourada wrote:
>  Hi Sergio,
>
>
>  On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:25:44 -0200
>  Sergio wrote:
>
> > Hi.
> > xfce4-mixer 4.10 wasn't giving me a choice to use the 'default' card
> > (pulseaudio). It used to in F17.
> > I even downgraded to v. 4.8 but it just shows the alsa card.
> > Of course even alsamixer shows the default pulseaudio card and
> > pnmixer too.
> >
>  It never had the option to use 'default' card as long as I remember. 
I'm sure it had (not that it was a reliable thing, as for you it already 
didn't give that option). Even xfce4-mixer itself could choose between 
both (just like alsamixer).
Yesterday I was messing with my Xfce settings when after deleting some 
stuff I tried to reset the mixer applet to use the 'default' and it just 
showed the internal card.
IDK if it's a gstreamer thing or whatever. I did remove some unused 
gstreamer packages I had after upgrading from F17 to F18 but they were 
just plugins, I think.
Anyway, I'm using pnmixer.

>  And recently the panel applet also seem to have dropped the option
> to
>  start pavucontrol on click (or I'm blind)... 
Settings>Settings Editor, browser to xfce4-panel and change the call for 
xfce4-mixer for pavucontrol (or whatever you want).

> > It still looks like there's some bug somewhere as xfce4-mixer should
> > detect the default card.
>  More like a missing feature than bug, I think.
>  
I'm not sure, because the author doesn't like pulseaudio. He said it 
doesn't play well with gstreamer in the distro he uses (Debian?).

[Sergio Cipolla]

On 13 November 2012 19:40, Sergio <secipolla(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 11/13/2012 07:24 PM, Martin Sourada wrote:
> >
> > Hi Sergio,
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:25:44 -0200
> > Sergio wrote:
> >
> >> Hi.
> >> xfce4-mixer 4.10 wasn't giving me a choice to use the 'default' card
> >> (pulseaudio). It used to in F17.
> >> I even downgraded to v. 4.8 but it just shows the alsa card.
> >> Of course even alsamixer shows the default pulseaudio card and
> >> pnmixer too.
> >>
> > It never had the option to use 'default' card as long as I remember.
>
>
>  I'm sure it had (not that it was a reliable thing, as for you it already
>  didn't give that option). Even xfce4-mixer itself could choose between both
>  (just like alsamixer).
>  Yesterday I was messing with my Xfce settings when after deleting some stuff
>  I tried to reset the mixer applet to use the 'default' and it just showed
>  the internal card.
>  IDK if it's a gstreamer thing or whatever. I did remove some unused
>  gstreamer packages I had after upgrading from F17 to F18 but they were just
>  plugins, I think.
>  Anyway, I'm using pnmixer. 
Here's Beta TC9 Xfce spin live-cd in the same machine:
http://www.zimagez.com/zimage/screenshot-11162012-021015pm.php

Then I copied xfce4-mixer.xml and xfce4-panel.xml to my installed
system (after clearing the session JIC) but when opened they rewrote
the configs without the pulseaudio options (all three).

I compared ~/.gstreamer-0.10/registry.i686.bin on the live-cd and in
my installed F18.
The first is 567K big and the latter is 97K big.

As I said before I removed all un-needed gstreamer packages here and I
suspect maybe one of them is required by xfce4-mixer to see
pulseaudio. But it could be some upgrade that broke it too as the spin
has pretty old packages (for F18).

Unfortunately I forgot to list all gstreamer packages shipped with the live-cd.

Switching topic, as seen on the linked screen-shot the partitions are
listed twice on the desktop. The bug report I opened for that back in
TC2 or TC3 was closed because fixed IIRC in udisks2. Can't the udisks2
package (and maybe gvfs and maybe all the rest?) be updated on the
spin? lightdm has been, right?

[Sergio Cipolla]

Confirmed the xfce4-mixer dependency issue.
I installed gstreamer-plugins-good/bad/ugly (and dependencies), then
installed and launched parole only for it to update the gstreamer
registry and now mixer sees pulseaudio:
http://www.zimagez.com/zimage/screenshot-11162012-062434pm.php

So when I track down which package is required xfce4-mixer
dependencies need to be updated.