[linux-audio-dev] Best-performing Linux-friendly MIDI interfaces?

[Christoph Eckert]

> Now the main problem I see with ALSA for the 'desktop'
> users are in the control interfaces. Maybe the idea of the
> driver providing a sort of description of the card (e.g. a
> list of control elements) and having this info interpreted
> by a generic mixer application was not the best one. It
> works in some cases, but breaks down easily when a card has
> different 'modes', in particular for surround. For example
> it seems to be quite difficult to get a single volume
> control for all channels in a 5.1 setup, something a
> desktop audio user would take for granted.

Right. But did we have another chance? No.

ALSA tries to drive different cards, maybe based on a certain 
chip, with one driver (e.g. AC '97). Or different cards based 
on a certain bus (USB via snd_usb_audio).

ALSA doesn't know anything about the jacks that are actually 
available to the user via the computer's or card's chassis.

This led to the generic mixer interfaces which cannot reflect 
what the user expects, that's true. But I still think generic 
mixer interfaces have been the right way to go in the past - 
due to the limited manpower of the ALSA project. It was 
better to concentrate on the drivers. I'm simply impressed 
how many cards are supported by the usb_audio-driver.

Maybe it will be possible to add an interface to ALSA so users 
can easily contribute card/computer specific mixer 
information. But still there will be some disadvantages:

* I do not expect that too many users will contribute. See the 
instrument definition files in sequencers

* Even if there were many and good user contributed mixer 
interfaces it will still be difficult for "normal" Desktop 
users to understand and use it. The signal flow in a 
soundcard still is a black boxed thing for common users. What 
does monitoring mean? Why does the CD slider not affect the 
volume of a CD I play via xmms? What the heck does PCM mean?


Let's be honest: Let a "normal" desktop user look into the 
mixer panel on a WXP driven notebook. He will be disappointed 
as much as looking into todays alsamixer ;-) .


Thanks for the thoughts & best regards


    ce