SpeakersAndSound

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Summary

Create a simple 'Speakers and sound' graphical configuration tool (or a new tab in gnome-sound-properties) using gtk.

Release Note

There have been complaints that Ubuntu lacks a speakers and sound configuration utility, which forces newbies to manually edit .asoundrc and /etc/modules.d/alsa files if they want to use surround sound or another soundcard. Manually editing the files is difficult and frustrating to them, and not an ideal way to handle the issue on the long run.

The 'Speakers and sound' tool should be able to configure: * default soundcard used by Ubuntu * speakers configuration (from 2.0/2.1 to surround 5.1, 7.1, etc.)

Example look of the application:

http://trihelix.interkar.pl/wiki.ubuntu.com/speakersandsound/proposal.png

An application exists by the name of Kasound which is a .asoundrc frontend but it's for kde, not gnome enviroment: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kasound/. There is also asoundconf-gtk but it is buggy and does not allow to change the speakers configuration.

Rationale

Ubuntu strives to be the easiest to use Linux distro. Several steps have been taken to make the user experience natural. At the moment, it is only possible editing ~/.asoundrc, but is too complicated for unexperienced users. Creating such a tool and including it by default would make changing sound card and speakers configuration natural.

Use Cases

Bill have 2 sound cards installed and would like to use the 2nd instead of the first.

Jerry has got 5.1 speakers and he doesn't know how to configure them to hear surround sound when watching movies. He's got stereo.

Design

The application could be similar to the existing "Screens and graphics" configuration tool. It should be written in gtk.

Implementation

The application could use some parts of the asoundconf-gtk tool code.

Further Ideas

The user should be asked which sound card should be used by default on the first start of Ubuntu.

http://trihelix.interkar.pl/wiki.ubuntu.com/speakersandsound/notify.png


CategorySpec

SpeakersAndSound (last edited 2008-08-06 16:21:46 by localhost)