Microsofts new way of bashing Linux

[Florian Diesch]

"Michael T. Richter" <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:

> I can play an AC3-encoded movie file on a system with only stereo capabilities
> using any audio/video application because the sound system downmixes
> automagically behind the scene.  Under Linux I have to hunt around my various
> playback applications from movie to movie because some files will play under
> Totem, some under Xine, some under VLC, etc. because downmixing is the domain
> of the application, not the "Advanced" sound architecture's.


It doesn't sound to be exactly useful to me to compare the features of a low
level API like ALSA with high level API like the Windows API. It's like
complaining that plain X has no function to draw dialogs.

There are some high level sound APIs like GStreamer. Windows has only
one API which has some advantages and some disadvantages.


> Oh, and in Windows I can plug in my external sound card, set it as the default
> and have 100% of audio go out to it.  In Linux some apps will reliably ignore
> the external sound card and play only into my laptop's built-in, some will go
> reliably out the external and ignore the laptop's, some will switch randomly
> between them and still others will just get so hopelessly confused they throw
> their hands up in disgust and dump core.  (To the point that I just gave up on
> ever using the external audio card.)

This sounds like you changed the settings only in Gnome which obviously
doesn't affect non-Gnome apps. Changing ALSA's default sound card should
do the trick. Id there's no documentation about this please contact the
documentation team on you could help to provide one after you got it working.



   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>