[SOLVED] Pulseaudio With HDMI & Volumes

Originally Posted by business_kid Pulseaudio is really a POS. What irritates me is that I've been farting about for hours trying to sort this, and yesterday as well. You stop messing when it works, but you're no wiser.

But you're wiser now, you just learned not to "fart" around with it anymore if it works
See the header of this post I wrote some time ago:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...2/#post5943623

You mean this?

Originally Posted by agba First, Pulseaudio is a piece of SW (in my opinion it should be called incomplete&unstable work/crap) that you need to treat with respect, be happy that it works and never ask why. If you're a patient person and have plenty of time to waste, you can try to make some sense of this official "documentation", that's what they call it:

Yeah, I'll second that. The sad thing is that it's wormed it's way into so many distros that software writers are addressing it, and therefore it becomes necessary. Like pppd in the old days - nobody could give you a line using pppd that would dial up for you but people used frontends - eg wvdial that you input your details into and they ran pppd for you. I think that ended it's life as kwvdial. Thankfully, broadband made that redundant.

Sometimes I feel linux shows the lack of a BDFL. Richard Stallman certainly lacks the 'B' requirement; Linus to his credit, listened to somebody, and is regaining it. But they each have their hands full. If pulse were still on 0.x (where it should be) instead of 12.2 or later, people could assess it better.

In the older post I referenced in #16 there's a link to some comprehensive but unofficial documentation. I'd advise you to have a look at it, at least you can get a better understanding about its design - "devices (sources and sinks) connected to streams (source outputs and sink inputs)".
Here you have it again:
https://gavv.github.io/articles/puls...nder-the-hood/

I don't think you can compare pulseaudio with pppd, I used ppp extensively during my ISP "rookie" years (long time ago) on routers and modem pools. At least you could get some proper documentation from both the open-source world and commercial (Cisco at that time) and write functional AT scripts (sequences/chats).

As you mentioned, pulseaudio doesn't look mature enough for a 12.x version, main and simple functionality is usually there, but exceptions (like in your case now) are frequent ant not handled properly. Documentation is really poor and the development seems unprofessional (lack of experience/seriousness/coherence). Fixing the basics (core) and handling exceptions should be the primary focus, adding features and transformations should be second.
In this respect, I remember noticing the transformation of config files from clear text to some binary (DB based?). I guess it's a pathological (cannot explain it otherwise) obsession the pulseaudio devs experience (same with the systemd binary logs). Maybe they just prepare pulseaudio for an alien invasion with a population of gazillions, that only speaks binary and will fall in love with it. They could install it on all their spaceships, use millions of sound cards in parallel and have billions of sound profiles for each card to choose from ...
See the last sentences from these older posts I wrote (dumped the EQ idea - had no time to waste anymore):
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...2/#post5762840
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...2/#post5785203

Looked at those old posts... I feel your pain. If fairness, having programmed in low level (PLCs, Microcontrollers, and some random other stuff) binary is much easier to program for than text in low level low overhead stuff.

But with linux, I thought they had readline, text reading libs and enough GPL Stuff that you could copy and paste that code and use. Like pppd, they're not considering the user. Hence my comment about a linux BDFL or DFL committee.