The Audio Panel and Desktop Sounds

Documentation / Contents - Audio Panel

• Overview of the Audio Panel
  • What It Controls, and What It Does Not
  • Two Faces
  • If There Is No Sound Card
• Anatomy of the Window
  • The Device Area
  • A Strip, Top to Bottom
  • The Control Rows
  • The Message Line
  • Selecting a Strip
• Setting Levels
  • The Faders
  • Group Sliders
  • Mute
  • Monitor
  • Meter
  • Sample Rate
  • What Is Not Persisted
• Meters, Peaks, and Clipping
  • Turning Them On
  • The dB Ladder
  • How They Move
  • When There Is No Signal
• Devices and Backends
  • Backends
  • The Default Input and Output
  • Choosing What Is Shown
  • Pinning a Device
  • Input Source and Output Destination
• The Menus
  • File
  • Selected
  • View
  • Options
  • Default
  • Help
  • The Button 3 Menu
• Dialogs
  • Open and Save As
  • Device Preferences
  • About
• Keys and the Command Line
  • Keys
  • The Headless Command Line
  • Diagnostics
    • Finding the Right Mixer Stage
• Settings and Files
  • The Configuration File
  • What Is Deliberately Not Saved
  • Environment Variables
• The Canonical Face
  • What Is Different
  • What Works
  • What Is Inert
  • Honest About Its Own Evidence
• The Audio Panel and Desktop Sounds
  • The Difference
  • Which One Do I Want

Other cards

• Copyright Information

The Audio Panel and Desktop Sounds

Two panels deal with sound and they do different jobs. Confusing them is the usual reason a setting seems to have no effect.

The Difference

Audio Panel (cymix)     THE HARDWARE. Which device, what gain, muted or
                        not, what the input signal actually measures.

Sound (cysoundd-prefs)  THE DESKTOP. Whether opening a folder makes a
                        noise, which sound scheme is in use, and how loud
                        desktop sounds are relative to everything else.

Turning the master volume down in the Sound panel quietens the desktop's own sounds and nothing else; music keeps playing. Pulling an output fader down here quietens everything the machine produces.

The Sound panel's own output menu says as much: it offers only the default output and leaves per-device routing to this panel.

Which One Do I Want

• No sound at all, from anything: check this panel. Is the output muted, is the fader down, is the right device the default?
• Sound from applications but no click when you open a folder: the Sound panel. Are desktop sounds enabled, is the system muted, is a sound scheme selected?
• Nothing recording: this panel. Is the input fader up, is the right input the default, does Meter show any movement?

The Sound Panel

cyhelp --book Sounds --topic overview

No Wire Between Them Yet

The panel has a documented way for another program to feed it real peak levels, and the sound daemon is the intended source. That connection is not built. Today the meters are fed only by the panel's own capture process.

The Other Books

cyhelp --book Sounds --topic overview        desktop sound events
cyhelp --book Schemes --topic overview       colours
cyhelp --book Fonts --topic overview         typefaces
cyhelp --book Mouse --topic overview         pointer and cursor
cyhelp --book Localization --topic overview  location and time
cyhelp --book Blueprint --topic overview     the desktop

Back

• Overview of the Audio Panel