[Bug: 21.4.19] XEmacs Sounds Modulate System Volume Under Alsa and FC4

[Jerry James]

Hi Randy,

Sorry for the delay.  We had a minor problem that held up the mailing
lists for a little bit.

Randy Yates <yates at ieee.org> wrote:
> Everytime XEmacs plays a sound, the Alsa mixer volume is increased
> momentarily for the duration of the sound (e.g., drum, whip, etc.).
> This causes the volume from other PCM music sources (e.g., the xmms
> player) that may be active at the time to be modulated up and
> down. The amount of the volume change is significant and is very
> irritating. This behaviour also makes the sound XEmacs is playing very
> loud, in addition to increasing the volume (momentarily) of the other
> PCM sound sources.
>
> Specifically, if you start the gnome-volume-control application to
> monitor the mixer settings, you will find under the playback tab there
> are two volume sliders: Master and PCM. When XEmacs emits a sound, you
> can visually see the PCM volume being momentarily increased. (If the
> sound is short, a change in the slider position may not happen every
> time the sound is played - try it several times). 
>
> If you could look into this and repair it, or give me suggestions
> on how it can be avoided, I would be thankful.

Well, doggone.  This is what I get for trying to get sound working on
Fedora Core 5.  I'm the one who stuck you with this horrible behavior,
Randy.  I'll try to fix it.

I wrote the code trying to cope with the sound interface's volume
parameter.  I thought the mixer was the right way to deal with it.
Apparently not.  If any gnomes in the woodwork know how to set the
volume for one particular sound only, please sprinkle your magic pixie
dust on me.

Otherwise, I'll have to resort to reading documentation!

Regards,
-- 
Jerry James, Assistant Professor        james at xemacs.org
Computer Science Department             http://www.cs.usu.edu/~jerry/
Utah State University