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

[Tim E. Real]

On August 10, 2010 10:06:17 am you wrote:
> 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/ .
I will shrink the meters slightly, simply to align better with 
 the slider scales.
Uh, if you don't mind, I actually want to increase the mixer sliders to 
 around -60dB, instead of -48dB which I think may be a wee bit too high. 
The meters will only be as long as the -48dB mark,
 but the sliders will be longer, if it doesn't look too bad and there's
 enough room.

>
> 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.
Agreed. Good idea. Will try to allow that. Should be straight forward.

I totally neglected the mouse wheel! (I use a trackball). 
Will investigate to make sure wheel works OK.

I am aware of the issues when clicking on a slider, or moving
 it with the mouse. I'm working on it.
Part of the problem with the sliders is that they operate with 
 floating point. If you click on a slider it outputs a fractional
 value even if it's already on an integer value, especially 
 when the slider is stretched.
When you click on a slider, it sometimes goes back one fractional 
 step, which may be enough to cause it to go back one integer step.

I need to round() some of the values at several places in my code, 
 but when I tried it I got a pre-c99 compiler warning about 
 warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘round’.
So I left it alone. Perhaps with your -lm fix this will go away,
 or else we can just modernize the build as 'c99 compatible'.

With proper rounding some of these issues might go away.

>
> > 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 )
Good idea. I'm not sure what the correct course of action is.
Let's see what the ALSA community recommends.
I was only thinking of folks with old distros+gtk who might want 
 to use mudita24. (Alas, that might not be possible.)
That's why completely replacing envy24control with mudita24 worried me a bit.

This has been an interesting summer project!
Mudita24 is an important app, as you say, especially for those with expensive 
 professional envy24-based gear. The meters, the markings, the feel. Good!

Tim.

>
> Niels
> http://nielsmayer.com