[alsa-devel] What does 0dB refer to? (Logitech USB Speakers)

[John Rigg]

On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 07:14:44PM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> That sounds reasonable for now. Professional sound card users will maybe 
> just have to remember to mute the master control before connecting their 
> speakers.

A better solution IMO would be to make the default behaviour of the
pro/semi-pro sound cards default to minimum gain with everything muted,
and do what you're suggesting with other cards. 

If non-pro users want to use pro cards (which are fairly specialised
after all), they can unmute things. The idea of, say, starting up the
hdsp mixer for an RME HDSP MADI card and having all 64 channels come up
at 0dB is pretty frightening. Anything which can start in such a
potentially dangerous state is unusable in a professional context.

John