Sound Monitor Applet

by:

Dan Mueth


Table of Contents
Sound Monitor Applet

Sound Monitor Applet

Sound Monitor Applet, shown in its default theme(appearance) in Figure 1, is a sound volume display and an interface for controlling ESD (the Enlightened Sound Daemon). If you are not familiar with ESD, it is a program which controls sound on your system and allows all of your applications to play sound at the same time. To add this applet to a Panel, right-click on the Panel and choose Panel->Add to panel->Applet->Multimedia->Sound Monitor.

Figure 1. Sound Monitor Applet

Usage

Sound Monitor always displays the volume of sound being produced on your system graphically. You may control sound by turning ESD on or off by right-clicking on the applet and selecting Place Esound in standby or Resume Esound respectively, as described below.

If you right-click on the applet, it brings up a menu, containing the following commands:

  • About… — shows info about the Sound Monitor, inluding the version and the author's name and email address.

  • Help… — brings up this document.

  • Properties…— brings up the Properties dialog.

  • Manager… — brings up the Sound Monitor Manager dialog, which allows you to view and control current ESD settings.

  • Place Esound in standby/Resume Esound — These menu items allow you to temporarily place ESD in standby and then resume ESD. This is useful if you have a sound application which is unable to work with ESD, but needs direct access to the sound device.

NoteNote About Sound in GNOME
 

For sound to work in GNOME, you must have sound enabled in the Control Center. To configure sound, click on the Main Menu button (the foot icon) and select Programs->Setting->Multimedia->Sound. Make sure both sound options are enabled in the General tab. Feel free to configure and test things in the Sound Events section. Note that you may have to exit GNOME and restart for sound to work properly after enabling it in the Control Center for the first time.

Customization

You can customize Sound Monitor by right-clicking on it and choosing Properties…. This will open the Properties dialog(shown in Figure 2), which allows you to change various settings.

Figure 2. Properties dialog

The properties in the General tab are:

  • Peak indicator — This controls the behavior of the peak indicator (the bright line which tracks the peak volume), either turning it off (off), having it follow the peak as if it is floating on top (active), or having it follow a more smooth sense of the peak(smooth), which may actually lie slightly below the active peak which can briefly increase above the smooth peak.

  • Peak indicator falloff speed — This controls the speed the peak indicator falls back to zero volume.

  • Scope (scale 1:X, where X=?) — This controls the horizontal (time) axis scale for Sound Monitor themes which resemble a scope. (Since the default theme is not a scope, this control does not do anything until you have modified the theme, as described below.)

  • Connect points in scope — This determines whether the sampled volume points are connected. (For scope themes only.)

  • Screen refresh (frames per second) — This controls the number of times the Sound Monitor display is updated each second.

The properties in the Theme tab are:

  • Theme file (directory) — This is the theme for you Sound Monitor, which determines the overall appearance of the applet. You can either select a theme from the list Themes:, or else type in the directory and name of another theme if available. Some of the standard themes are shown in Figure 3.

    Figure 3. Example Sound Monitor Themes

The properties in the Advanced tab are:

  • ESD host to monitor —

After you made all the choices you want, click on OK to make the changes and close the Properties dialog. To cancel the changes and return to previous values, click the Cancel button.

The Sound Monitor Manager

To start the Sound Monitor Manager, right-click on the applet and choose Manager…. This will open the Sound Monitor - Manager dialog(shown in Figure 4), which allows you to view and modify various ESD settings.

Figure 4. Properties dialog

The Server tab displays the following information:

  • Esound version —

The properties in the Streams tab are:

  • Peak indicator —

The properties in the Samples tab are:

  • ESD host to monitor —

After you made all the choices you want, click on OK to make the changes and close the Properties dialog. To cancel the changes and return to previous values, click the Cancel button.

Known bugs and limitations

There are no known bugs.

Authors

This applet was writen by John Ellis . To submit suggestions and bug reports, use The GNOME Bug Tracking System or the bug-buddy utility in the Main Menu.