pulseaudio, howto make it work?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 24 August 2008, Tim wrote:
>On Sun, 2008-08-24 at 09:48 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
>> But what I'm still left wondering is the fundamental question: "What
>> the devil is the problem people imagine exists which they imagine
>> pulseaudio solves?". I can't even get my brain wrapped around the
>> motivation for pulseaudio. Simply because it is possible?
>
>One feature:  The ability to have several different things playing
>sound, each with their own volume levels.  e.g. Your music player
>playing at the volume you want, the beeps from your IM program at the
>volume you want (including silence) without disrupting the playback of
>your music, etc.
>
>Alsa went some way towards letting more than one thing make a sound at
>the same time, but you were stuck with one overall volume level.  Which
>not-only is it often inappropriate, but it's also a right pain that
>adjusting the volume of one thing would affect others.
>
>When I turn my warning beeps up or down, I want them to stay at that
>volume.  I don't want adjusting the sound level of my music player to
>muck that up.  Pulseaudio goes some way towards that goal, but only if
>you play with its own volume control, instead of your sound card mixer.
>Really, the volumes should be set on the applications, for themselves,
>and themselves alone.  e.g. The volume control on XMMS ought to *only*
>affect XMMS.
>
I certainly can't argue with that, its a right pain the way it is now.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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