New Volume Control Interface For GNOME

[RussDill]

What about the MIxer?

The thing that burns me the most is that the mixer is gone. alsa/hda-intel is still missing the piece that turns of the speakers when headphones are plugged in, so I need to do it manually. Now I can't (unless I use the curses alsamixer), not only that, I can do things like adjust input levels independently, turn on/off mic amp, etc, etc, etc.

I seriously don't care about independently adjusting volume for applications much less different alert sounds. The only thing to me that is nice about pulse is that I can easily move music or video streams to a network or bluetooth sink.

And yes, the change of the volume control from up/down to left/right seems incredibly stupid, especially since many cultures read from right to left instead of left to right.

The volume control properties applet itself looks like a UI hell as well.

[williamthrilliam]

The whole stack is broken

Linux audio is in a sorry state. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels that audio was better a year ago than it is today. I have seen more than one distro now tout "rock solid audio" or the like, and I have yet to get stable skype or flash audio. Some of you might direct me to a forum where it describes the 100 steps it takes to get these things working, but I don't want to have to do that. It should work. I read a nice blog that described exactly how I felt in more technical terms here: http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/...-on-linux.html .

[apaige]

"becoming"?

[cruiseoveride]

gnome is really becoming dependency hell.

I absolutely loathe pulseaudio.

[n0nsense]

Eh! I said:


Or do you mean the previous, previous post by RealNC? I think s/he was being sarcastic, with the trailing dots at the end of the sentence.

The rest of your post: Yes agree totally.

It was about RealNC's sarcastic post
I'm almost 12 hours at work after very happy night, so at some point, the ability to understand sarcasm and humor was lost

[kiwi_kid_aka_bod]

First, i want to address previous post.
You can use scroll wheel when your cursor over volume applet.
No real need to open it. Same with amarok tray icon.

Eh! I said:

Yes, I know my wheel turns the volume up/down.

Or do you mean the previous, previous post by RealNC? I think s/he was being sarcastic, with the trailing dots at the end of the sentence.

The rest of your post: Yes agree totally.

[n0nsense]

First, i want to address previous post.
You can use scroll wheel when your cursor over volume applet.
No real need to open it. Same with amarok tray icon.

And now the interesting questions.
1. Balance control is nice, but what if you have more channels ? like 5.1 or 7.1 which is kind of standard ?

What about things like assigning output/input device on per application basis ? For example, I have HP xw4300 as my HTPC. It has integrated sound card with integrated speaker which is very good for things like Skype (ringing) and using it with front panel input/output jacks, but things like movies, music games and more, i want through dedicated sound card.
It is configurable now in some applications, and some working with gnome sound settings, but there is now easy way that i found to switch output device on the fly for some application. For example,I browsing net on HTPC and my browser sound outputted through integrated soundcard, but then i open some online radio (like last.fm) and i want to turn on my receiver and switch output device.
Currently it takes a lot of effort.
Will this things addressed in this redesign ?

[kiwi_kid_aka_bod]

This would be awesome if you could simply use the mouse wheel to up/down the volume without getting confused with all the directions...

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?

Yes, I know my wheel turns the volume up/down. My mother probably doesn't, and she's pretty good at figuring things out. She tells me horror stories such as people attaching 20 files to an email one at a time at her work.

Just because it's possible doesn't mean
a) it's known,
b) it's obvious if it's not known, or
c) it's a good idea to change established practices just because someone feels like it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there any other significant OS where the master volume control is horizontal?

[RealNC]

This would be awesome if you could simply use the mouse wheel to up/down the volume without getting confused with all the directions...

[kiwi_kid_aka_bod]

Just one comment/criticism: Why in the hell have they rotated the volume control from the system tray?

It doesn't really add anything, and now I have two travel in two directions to adjust the level: Down, Left/Right finding the grab, versus Up/Down.

Mentally the vertical orientation is also simpler to grasp, versus left-or-right, scan-for-icon, see-the-plus, translate, ok-drag-right-to-turn-volume-up palava



Other than that, it looks pretty good, though I do hope apps linger in the tab for a while, so if it plays a short sound at full volume, I'd like to be able to change it after the fact, so it doesn't wake the neighbors next time.

PS. This kind of change on such a fundamental control should be forbidden unless a proper usability review is undertaken showing that the usability is improved.