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

[Rene Herman]

On 13-04-08 17:17, stan wrote:

> Rene Herman wrote:

>> On 13-04-08 12:51, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
>>
>>   
>>> It seems to me that whatever way you look at this, A default value of 
>>> "MUTE" is really the only safe level for all sound card types.
>>>     
>> Always good to be ignored. How about that card specific "defaults" setup 
>> that I suggested?

> I think this would theoretically work, but it requires creating and 
> maintaining a database of all sound cards.  And if a card is not in the 
> database, there still has to be a default behavior.  ;-)

That default would just be "do nothing" -- ie, keep things muted as now.

> Perhaps an entry could be added to the .asoundrc or asound.state file 
> that sets this.  Although the main time this is of import is the first 
> time a sound card is used, so there would have to be a default entry  
> :-).  After that it retains its previous state and is not as important.
> 
> It looks like mute is a reasonable compromise, except for blind users.

For all I and most other sensible (and non-blind) people care, it is, but as 
James said, distributions disagree. Generally, it's possible to provide a 
set of reasonable "non-mute default" on a per card basis but ALSA is the 
only one that can do so. I don't believe that creating a default control 
settings file upon submission of a new driver would be unreasonable. We 
already have /usr/share/alsa/cards/<card>.conf as well. Keeping it in sync 
over changes to the driver might be a slight problem.

But, like you yourself conclude, in the end just changing nothing is the 
other option and that's something distribution disagree with. Not I...

Rene.