[Alsa-user] I think that the current state of ALSA is poor

[<we...@gm...>]

On my way to become an advanced Linux user I started to learn
ALSA. However, it seems that ALSA, and sound system in general on
Linux, is in a pretty bad state at the moment. Here are the examples -
don't get me wrong, fix me if I got things wrong:

1) my work computer with Ubuntu has HDA Intel PCH soundcard
installed. Moving PCM slider in alsamixer or muting it has no
effect. This happens both when pulseaudio server is stopped and
running. Moreover, manipulating volume slider inside pavucontrol
results in higher volume than when Master and Speakers are set to
maximum in alsamixer alone. That means, if I set a maximum volume
inside pavucontrol I can hear sound louder because even if volume is
set to maximum in alsamixer it is only about 50% in pavucontrol.

2) my home laptop HP Pavilion DV6 3015ew with Slackware has HDA ATI SB
soundcard installed. Here, moving PCM slider in alsamixer changes
volume correctly but PCM cannot be muted. Nothing happens in alsamixer
when I press `m', and amixer says:

$ amixer set PCM mute
amixer: Invalid command!

pulseaudio is not running here. Why is PCM observed behavior not
coherent between 1) and 2) ?

3) my Toshiba n550d netbook has 2 soundcards - alsamixer shows
"HD-Audio Generic" and "HDA ATI SB". What is bad is that the first
card is set as default but it has no controls in alsamixer apart from
"S/PDIF". Why this has happened? It brings some problems in programs
that pick the first available card and treat it as default. For
example, mocp says:

Running the server...
Trying OSS...

FATAL_ERROR: No valid sound driver

FATAL_ERROR: Server exited

I needed to the following to $HOME/.moc/config:

AlsaDevice = hw:1,0

4) What's the relationship between Alsa, PulseAudio and OSS? On my HP
Pavilion laptop I installed Linphone, a cool SIP client but I wasn't
able to use it with my in-built mic until I set capture device to
"OSS: /dev/dsp" in Linphone. I was looking for some general
information on how to configure a microphone and I found this:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/Record_from_mic. However, this guide contains
expressions such as "I am not sure about that" or "Other things to
try: " and a list of random thoughts follows. And about PulseAudio, I
remember back in days that killing PulseAudio was the very first thing
to do after starting the system to able to hear any sound at all.

5) My parents have Acer Aspire d255. It has some problems with
in-built microphone - it doesn't work. This bug describes it:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/940841. Does anybody
know if this problem is solved now in new kernel, new ALSA or is it
solved at all? My parents are computer illiterate, they used to have
Windows 7 Starter on this machine but it took it like 15 minutes to
start so I removed it and installed Ubuntu for them. Now I have to
explain to them why the microphone doesn't work out of the box.

6) A few months ago I got myself Creative bluetooth speakers. I have
the following in my ~/.asoundrc.conf:

Quote:
pcm.bluetooth {
type bluetooth
device 00:02:3C:20:1D:5E
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "bluetooth"
}

Some programs such as xmms2 can pick these settings correctly and play
music on speakers, but some others such as mplayer can't do that and I
always have to pass "-ao alsa:device=bluetooth" what's really annoying
(I could create an alias for that but it's just a workaround and not a
real solution). What's even more, I can't play sound in 2 programs
simultaneously - only one program at a time can play sound. If I open
a flash video in Firefox, I need to close it before I can play a song
in xmms2. xmms2 for example is saying:

Please check that:

Your sound card is configured properly
You have the correct output plugin selected
No other program is blocking the sound card

That's all. I am quite worried about all of these. It makes me thing
that Linux is still not ready for wider adoption amongst casual users.

-- 
<we...@gm...>