Does one have to be a sound engineer?

Tim ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Thu Jul 3 03:55:24 UTC 2008


On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 16:20 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> What exactly does "Front" mean?

If you have multi-channel sound, then that's either the front-centre
channel volume, or an overall front speakers volume.  But I highly doubt
it'd be the second.

  left       centre       right
  front      front        front

              you

  left                    right
  rear                    rear

  and, somewhere, a sub-woofer


> Windows XP seems to get by without all this sophistication.

Hmmph, try setting up multichannel audio on XP, and you'll find out it
can be a complete mess.

In either case, Windows or Linux, some multi-channel cards can be
operated in different modes (multi-channel, or just two-channel), and
that'll affect which volume control does what if they re-arrange the
order of the channels.  It also affects what connectors do what, on many
there's not enough sockets for everything.  So you lose microphone and
line inputs to become rear channel outputs, etc.

Computer audio hardware is a crock.  Even the manufacturers make a mess
of it when supplying their own software to run their hardware.  It's no
wonder that outsiders don't get it right, either.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.6-55.fc9.i686

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