Re: [Ayatana] Pulseaudio / Sound Indicator usability issue

[Jan Claeys <lists@xxxxxxx>]

Op vrijdag 16-04-2010 om 09:19 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef Ara Pulido:
> Lucid is looking great in terms of user experience, but there is an
> issue with the sound indicator that keeps bothering me.
> 
> *The issue:*
> When I plug a USB headphone, by default, pulseaudio starts outputting
> directly to the headphone but it does not get reflected in the selection
> of the output device in gnome-media and, therefore, changing the volume
> there (or the sound indicator) does not get reflected in the volume.
> Even worse, if the sound was muted before plugging the headset, the
> headset won't be muted, and, as the sound indicator is supposed to "Mute
> All" devices, it gets a bit confusing.
> 
> I raised the problem to Conor Curran a while ago and we decided to raise
> the problem to the PulseAudio developers. After a long IRC conversation
> (which I have posted at the end of this message for reference) it turned
> out that it wasn't a bug, but just the way audio routing works in
> PulseAudio. There is a blog post [1] explaining how PulseAudio handles
> routing.
> 
> Although this is "how PulseAudio is supposed to work" I still think this
> is an important usability issue in Lucid. An end user (and me!!), when
> plugging a USB headset, would expect the sound to come out from the
> headset (which is how it works now) but, also, would expect to be able
> to control the volume with the indicator sound.

What about a solution like this:
http://code.google.com/p/gnome-pulse-applet/wiki/Screenshots

(The screenshots show 4 simultaneous streams, but of course in practice
most of the time there won't be more than 1 or 2.)


-- 
Jan Claeys