[alsa-devel] Only one element for multichannel mixer controls please!

[Takashi Iwai]

At Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:53:30 +0100 (CET),
Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2008, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> 
> > And, the current smixer abstraction sucks.  Really.
> 
> Because we do not have any abstraction available at this moment. The 
> smixer API is not bad itself, it's just about internal alsa-lib code and 
> how to implement abstraction layers. Also, for applications using PCM 
> devices we need to add two functions handling all used channels like this:
> 
> /* for PCM stream volume control */
> int snd_pcm_mixer_element(snd_pcm_t *pcm, snd_mixer_t *mixer, snd_mixer_elem_t **elem);
> /* for Master volume control - will not be available for recording */
> int snd_pcm_mixer_master(snd_pcm_t *pcm, snd_mixer_t *mixer, snd_mixer_elem_t **elem);
> 
> My idea is to describe the correlations between PCM and mixer in the 
> standard .conf files defining PCM devices.
> 
> The internal smixer interface can be extended using dynamic C library now, 
> but the question is, who will write C modules for all cards. I also
> prepared python interface to allow fast smixer prototyping. Another 
> possibility is to create a C module which will parse a text configuration
> file describing the abstaction.

Yes, I know these.  Still, nothing is there over years.  And I'm
afraid of being so forever.

IMHO, a big part of the problem is its overly complex layers and
old-style mixer API (in addition to complete lack of documentation).
The plugin solution doesn't work well because you are tring to graft
orange and apple.


Takashi