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PA finds that the PCM slider is not really useful for volume control
(no attenuation to at least -60dB, too few steps, no seperate controls
for all channels, ...) it falls back to software volume control,
however tries to initialize the the slider to 0dB first."

So, I think this is plainly wrong. You could improve this by other
means (maybe the user interface could be clever), but setting an
unwanted level out of the blue it's going to be a serious problem to
many many users. Please don't touch the levels if I don't want that.


>  However, having "alsctl reset" is nice. But it is still not sufficient
>  for the actual problems I need to solve in PA. See below.

>  > That's all, end of story! If you put code that tries to guess what the
>  > appropiate volume should be for any case, it will become an infinite
>  > problem of what is right and what is wrong, not counting the annoying
>  > user experience this will bring. You can't guess what is right for
>  > every people, so a sane mute (in case of no other source of
>  > information) is clearly the only good choice.
>
>  The problem is a bit more complex. Think of multiple sessions and
>  stuff. If ConsoleKit informs PA about a session switch we need to be
>  able to provide every user hs own set of mixer settings.
>  Dude, it's pretty easy to define a common refernce of the dB
>  values. In fact, James (who afaik did the dB scale work initially)
>  already agreed to this and even suggested measuring the voltage on the
>  output jack.

And it's pretty easy to screw it up. -40db (even in the same scale)
WILL be different for every people: I usually plug my soundblaster to
a power amp of 300W. So, if I swith to another user, you are going to
change the volume up to -40db because YOU think that's what I want????


It's OK to calibrate all cards to behave the same, I agree with that.
It's NOT OK that your software treats you as a dumb and do things you
didn't ask....

-- 
Aldrin Martoq
Episodio 002 (Lunes 24 Marzo)!
http://aldrinvideopodcast.podshow.com/