[alsa-devel] [LAD] [LAU] mudita24 1.02 -- improved envy24control mixer/router for ice1712-based sound-cards

[Niels Mayer]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Tim E. Real <termtech at rogers.com> wrote:
> On August 9, 2010 08:45:49 pm Tim E. Real wrote:
>> Hey hey hey!
>> Look what I've got...
>> I thought it important and complete enough to let you see
>>  where it is going.

Just applied the patches, compiled... AWESOME! Sliders, dB scales and
meters in "Monitor Inputs" and "Monitor PCMs" resize when the window
is stretched! I'm looking forward to the completion of your TODO items
in AUTHORS esp the digital mixer meter resizing with stretchy scales
just like the mixer's channel meters. Let me know when you have things
finalized, and I'll add a mudita24 1.04 version to
http://nielsmayer.com/envy24control/ .

Of course the new resizeability feature brings up the issue that the
sliders can become long enough to display different positions for two
sliders at the same attenuator dB value. Perhaps this could be
remedied by an on-release callback that sets the slider back to the
center of it's actual dbFS value, e.g. -1.5dB, -3.0, -4.5, -6.0 etc...
This becomes especially noticeable on a stretched slider in "Monitor
Inputs" or "Monitor PCMs" due to the 1.5dB steps provided by the 24bit
attenuators feeding the digital mixer. It doesn't seem to be as
noticeable with the 0.5dB steps in the "Analog Volumes" panel.
However, on a fully-height-expanded window, you can notice, for
example, two sliders of a stereo pair showing the same dB value but
slightly different positions visually.

One "regression" in your change: formerly, you could click within the
scale/labeling area to set focus on a given slider. This is a large
and easy-to-click area if you just want to set GUI focus to that
particular channel and use the scroll-wheel or keyboard up/down arrows
to change values). Because if you click in the slider area to set the
selection, unless you click on the slider itself, the value gets
changed.

> One more thing: Because of my use of gtk_adjustment_get_page_increment()
>  and friends, which require gtk+ 2.14, I think it may be necessary to
>  release this as a separate program than envy24control.
> There may be people out there with old setups who need the old one.
> The ALSA folks may not like replacing the old one with mudita24 for
> that reason.

Seems like there should be a way for their build system to handle
skipping programs that use gtk2 if only gtk1 available ... at least
for the myriad packages in
alsa-tools "Specialist tools for ALSA" -- which might also be a
perfectly appropriate place to put a latest-gtk2-using tool providing
special control to a specific set of cards. I haven't surveyed the
other packages to see what kind of dependencies they have... I'm
CC'ing to alsa-devel in hopes of getting an answer on this.
(thread summary:
http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lad/2010/8/8/172623
http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lad/2010/8/8/172629 )

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com