softvol, ao_pulse: prefer ao_pulse volume control by default

--softvol is enabled by default. For most audio outputs, this is a good
thing, as they have either their own (bad) soft volume implementation,
or control the system mixer. With ao_pulse, the situation is a bit
different: it supports per-application volume (i.e. volume control is
not really global). More importantly, ao_pulse uses a rather large audio
buffer, and changing the volume with mplayer's volume filter has a large
delay. With the native ao_pulse volume control, it's instant, because
PulseAudio's audio filtering happens at a later stage in its processing
pipeline (inaccessible for mplayer).

This means native volume control should really be allowed for ao_pulse,
while it's the reverse for other audio outputs. Make --softvol a choice
option, and add a new "auto" choice. This is default and will use PA's
volume control with ao_pulse, and mplayer's volume filter otherwise
(i.e. the old softvol behavior).

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/cfg-mplayer.h b/cfg-mplayer.h
index ed3fef7304..a6b8e93647 100644
--- a/cfg-mplayer.h
+++ b/cfg-mplayer.h
@@ -587,7 +587,10 @@ const m_option_t mplayer_opts[]={
 
     OPT_STRING("mixer", mixer_device, 0),
     OPT_STRING("mixer-channel", mixer_channel, 0),
-    OPT_MAKE_FLAGS("softvol", softvol, 0),
+    OPT_CHOICE("softvol", softvol, 0,
+               ({"no", SOFTVOL_NO},
+                {"yes", SOFTVOL_YES},
+                {"auto", SOFTVOL_AUTO})),
     OPT_FLOATRANGE("softvol-max", softvol_max, 0, 10, 10000),
     {"volstep", &volstep, CONF_TYPE_INT, CONF_RANGE, 0, 100, NULL},
     {"volume", &start_volume, CONF_TYPE_FLOAT, CONF_RANGE, -1, 10000, NULL},