GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 440574
gstreamer-properties needs to allow custom ALSA devices
Last modified: 2015-01-19 11:46:32 UTC
There are a few audio projects that do all their work through userland ALSA plugins. The example I'm most interested is bluetooth-alsa, which uses a plugin to redirect the incoming alsa output to a bluetooth device. The audio device is defined as a custom device in my .asoundrc, but it is not registered with the kernel, and thus not in the list from /proc/asound/cards. Gstreamer properties only lets me select from the list of cards in /proc/asound/cards, and there isn't any option for me to specify a custom device. I can change the custom device by hacking the gconf directly (i.e 'audiosink device="plug:cpm.headphone"'), but that gets overwritten again when start gstreamer-properties again. Please provide an option for a user to easily specify a custom device. Other information:
Most of all, IMHO, gstreamer-properties needs to die and be replaced by gnome-control-center stuff :) But in any case, gstreamer-properties is part of gnome-media, so moving there.
(In reply to comment #0) > The audio > device is defined as a custom device in my .asoundrc, but it is not registered > with the kernel, and thus not in the list from /proc/asound/cards. One solution could be to use HAL notification for that. I will make sur that the upcoming bluez audio service announce ALSA sink/devices in HAL, with their properties (a2dp..). Though, we will have to extend HAL spec, which only support hw pcm announcment for now. > I can change the custom device by hacking the gconf directly (i.e > 'audiosink device="plug:cpm.headphone"'), but that gets overwritten again when > start gstreamer-properties again. Please provide an option for a user to > easily specify a custom device. You should be able to specify this custom sink by using "Custom" "Default Output" in gstreamer-properties. However, there is no way to list all the possible combination of ALSA pcm/ctl since plugins they can accept many arguments (such as a filename). But, a nice solution would be to parse current configuration (ie aplay -L) and have a friendy interface to fill that parameters. That require a lot of extra work that is not really necessary for user that simply will run and rely on PulseAudio to do whatever you want to do with alsa lib. Ronald will probably mark this bug as WONTFIX :)
I don't intend to rely on pulse. I don't think pulse is the solution to world hunger and all audio problems. I would like the gst plugin to be intelligent in this respect, so that we can just rely on autodetection.
> Gstreamer properties only lets me select from the list of cards in > /proc/asound/cards, and there isn't any option for me to specify a custom I manage to do in ekiga 2.0.11 this by having a non-bluetooth micro and speaker on the system. I then define my bluetooth device to be the default PCM device and in ekiga I choose "Default" for the microphone and/or speaker. A hack but it works (thought the bluetooth devices don't work well). pcm.!default { type plug; slave.pcm "rawM2500" } > Please provide an option for a user to > easily specify a custom device. yes thanks for ekiga! Stuart
gnome-media has been obsolete since the release of GNOME 3, nearly 4 years ago. Please file a bug against the applications themselves if the bugs you filed were relevant to particular features.