Fedora Rant #3 - why are the sound controls so weird?

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2005, Timothy Murphy wrote:

>
> I'm running Fedora-4 on a Sony C1VFK Picturebook,
> with a Yamaha YMF-754 audio controller (according to lspci),
> and I'm having trouble with sound -
> which sometimes works perfectly, but more often does not work at all.
>
> Now the problem may well be with the hardware,
> but my gripe is with the various methods which seem to be offered
> for controlling sound.
>
> I should say that I am running KDE,
> and I'm not entirely sure which tools belong to KDE, which to Fedora,
> and which to Linux generally.
>
> System Settings=>Soundcard Detection
> strikes me as completely useless.
> What exactly is the point of it?
> Has anyone ever found it of any use?

Why, yes.  I find that it detects and configures my sound cards (SB Live! 
and Intel 82801) flawlessly and plays a test sound in the left, right, and 
both channels.  That means it got the right hardware and inserted the 
right driver module with the right parameters.

As for what happens after that, as far as configuration details and 
settings, you may well have a complaint.  I don't do much with the card 
aftert that except play Real streams, CDs, videos, and MP3s through stereo 
speakers and headphones.  I use GNOME, so I can't advise you on the 
details of the KDE mixers.

>
> Why isn't there a System Settings=>Sound
> which will allow me to change the sound settings?
>
> The Control Centre=>Sound & Multimedia=>Sound System
> is almost as useless.
> containing only settings which I cannot imagine any normal person using
> (eg control sound from another computer).
>
> I have a Sound icon (a loudspeaker) in my panel,
> and if I right click on this and choose Show Mixer Window
> a KMix window comes up with a large selection of controls,
> all of which are more or less meaningless to me.
>
> What does a right-angle triangle, half-shaded in green,
> with a letter b on the hypotenuse, mean?
> Does this symbol have some universal significance?
>
> What does "FM Legacy" mean?
> What does it mean to set this control to say 55% ?
> And what is the strange icon, looking a little like a pen,
> which appears above it, and 4 other different controls?
>
> What a mess!
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs