Yes, it’s now clear we are not communicating successfully. From your previous:
Having stated that, pulse should give you MUCH MORE controls. I just don’t know how to set it up properly, and with due respect to the great contributors we have on this forum, I don’t think many others know how either.
Unfortunately, I did read that as “pulse[audio] should provide more controls [but doesn’t]”. If that were the case, your opinion would not agree with those of P/A devs. Those opinions are expressed in their responses to queries about sound-card channels previously presented by alsa-based mixers, now absent from mixers interfacing with pulseaudio. In spite of a response from P/A, the ticket containing that query/requirement is still open after 2 years of no resolution.
Since your follow-up post, I now realize that was a misinterpretation of your meaning, given some positive comments about the extra controls delivered by the Phonon/KMix settings (and delivered earlier by pavucontrol for Gnome on 11.3).
However as a contributor to the forum, I thought the comment about fellow contributors not knowing either, was unnecessary and unfounded, even when applied to yourself. And also this comment:
The problem here to a large extent is none of us know pulse all that well yet and hence we can not give much advice.
How do you know that to be the case? These “opinions” rather assume (wrongly in my view) that “how to set it up properly” is the outstanding question for user or contributor to answer in the PulseAudio environment. Although it’s a vital question in the Alsa environment, it doesn’t automatically follow for PulseAudio.
Perhaps the right question here is "Does P/A provide the right interface for setting up and adjusting a sophisticated multi-channel sound card, like the one the OP described in relation to his definition of a “proper mixer”. Everything I have read so far on the subject says that P/A is unsuitable for that type of device and user. My comments about serious musicians interfacing complex devices and setups was meant to underline that fact.
My own example of connecting a guitar effects processor (a device with lots of knobs, settings, and a display), for recording on a PC system, should work well with P/A. It’s not a multichannel device, and has a relatively simple codec-based and usb-connected interface.
It leads me to believe there are fundamental misunderstandings about where PulseAudio fits in, how it relates to Alsa, and the implications for users having openSUSE with PulseAudio as the default audio system on both KDE and Gnome.
If I select a 5.1 system in pulse, I get more controls more logically laid out in pulse than I ever did in kmix.
Not sure of your meaning there. Is that comparing pulse[audio] to old kmix/alsa, or just pavucontrol versus new KMix/Phonon settings i.e. same settings but presented differently?
As for pulse working with complicated devices that are used by musicians, comparing that had never been the intent of my post.
But not everything I posted was in reply to your previous post, apart from my first paragraph. I should have made that clearer.
If this is a post of a muscian looking for help with a complex device setup, then I misread it.
As it turned out, it was a post by a “musician” expecting a “proper mixer” able to support a multi-channel device (his sound card). Although that needed a question at the end of my post #3 to get that info. Initially the thread was all about KMix’s perceived inadequacy, due to a lack of basic research by an OP (IMO) who is obviously no novice on the subject of mixers and sophisticated soundcards.
