Re: Tragic State of FreeBSD Audio/Sound

On Mon Jul 20, 2026 at 8:38 PM EEST, vermaden wrote:
>> > I will not even start about PITA syntax of mixer(1) which went into
>> > this:
>> >=20
>> > % mixer -f ${DEV} vol.volume=3D+0.05
>>=20
>> Just use gtk-mixer, avail in ports.
>>=20
>> In recent years, I haven't noticed any bugs
>> in the operation of the OSS.
>
> I do it by scripts anyway ... but I needed to rewrite all my scripts beca=
use of these changes ... and this change in syntax was bad from at least th=
ree perspectives:
>
> 1. It happened in 'point' release (like from .2 to .3) - not in new major=
 release - breaking stuff for EVERYONE.

A quick look at mixer(8)'s man page would suggest otherwise... The
rewrite was introduced in 14.0, and was never MFC'd to 13.*.

> 2. It happened without any reason - the tool could do the same with old s=
yntax underneath - the new syntax does not introduce anything new - it just=
 has different syntax.

This is wrong in all aspects.

The tool does introduce something new: muting and unmuting.

And you could not do the same with the old syntax, because the old
syntax assumed that the only mixer functions are *just* volume and
recording source setting, but in an inconsistent way also. The new
syntax is uniform, and can support *any* function that we might want to
add. For now the new function is muting, but it could also be anything
else: panning, effect selectors, for instance. How exactly would you do
that with the old syntax?

> 3. As FreeBSD (at least up to some time ago) cherished the POLA
> principle WHY the old syntax could not been also kept and accepted?

I do not understand the obsession with POLA sometimes. There has to be
common sense also. mixer(8) is a simple enough program (and also
somewhat niche) that we can afford to improve an obviously limited
design.

At the moment I am the only consistent sound developer on FreeBSD, and
there are a few more people who occasionally contribute code, so
resources are naturally scarce. Instead of ranting on MLs about how
"tragic" sound is, you could spend that time to file a bug report so
that we can try to address your issues.

This whole thread is entirely pointless, not only because it is pure
complaining, but it is complaining without substance. You mention laptop
buzzing sounds, but you don't know if it is sound(4)'s fault, the
driver's fault, pulseaudio's fault, some other program's fault, faulty
hardware, some scheduler setting, etc. It is fine to not know, but at
least help us figure it out. You haven't even mentioned which driver or
sound card you run. On top of that, you talk about how tragic sound is,
how new changes break everything, but haven't mentioned anything else
apart from the buzzing which clearly does not affect everyone. What else
makes sound so tragic? I genuinely want to know so I can work on it.

Christos