GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 329923
Hard to understand how to setup the microphone
Last modified: 2015-01-19 11:50:09 UTC
So, I just bought a microphone. I tried hard to make it work and after a while, I read that I should also enable the "Capture" slide. This is really not intuitive since it was hidden by default. I'd expect that when I change the slide for the Microphone, if Capture is disabled, it gets enabled (maybe with the maximum value).
Alsa mixer does not expose the relation of the underlying controls. Ideally, what you express is really what we all want (what microsoft call "flat volume control"): manipulate audio devices as objects, without taking care of the internal aspects of stuffs: routing, switches, volumes... gnome-volume-control, however, does not have any policy: it just exposes what ALSA mixer API offers. IMHO, there are many things to fix before we get this bug fixed. 1. the alsa/hal stack should expose a high-level representation of the mixer interface, with the relation between inter-controls & pcm interfaces. 2. a daemon, could be pulseaudio, or something like HAL, or a better alsa-lib??, should implement the logic to make the routing option correct (volume level, panning, effects...): you would only manipulates audio end-points. but this is still a dream..
Of course, this is not just about ALSA, usually sound driver developpers don't even know how the sound chip will be integrated nowadays: a switch can have different meaning..
gnome-media has been obsolete since the release of GNOME 3, nearly 4 years ago. Furthermore, the gnome-volume-control program in gnome-media has been replaced by the Sound panel in gnome-control-center. The new Settings panel should not be affected by the bugs you filed, however, please make sure to file new bugs against the gnome-control-center product.