[MPlayer-users] Mute not silent: hack fix.

[D Richard Felker III]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 05:30:42PM -0800, Brad Allen wrote:
> Mute isn't silent.  I mute to turn off distraction, and a mute that
> doesn't completely silence output isn't mute to me.
> 
> The problem is simple:  The way MPlayer executes mute is to set volume
> to 0 for both left and right channel, however, that is insufficient to
> mute.  What does work is to set each channel to Mute; that makes it
> 100% silent, and is what I want.
> 
> My question is how can I get mplayer mute command to actually execute
> a mute instead of a volume zero?
> 
> I started to look into ALSA to see how to execute Mute.  I will have
> to learn more about alsalib and its higher level access functions, and
> then copy code in amixer.c and/or alsamixer.c to MPlayer.  I got 1/4th
> done when I decided it's too much work to do unless no one else has
> done it.
> 
> I do know other solutions, but they are all non-free and a pain, which
> seems unnecessary since there's obviously a SW solution mentioned above:
> 
> * Buy much larger hard disks, and stop watching things I can't pause,
>   and use "-ao none" for anything that I don't want to hear, or just
>   set mute before running MPlayer;
> 
> * Buy additional IR receiver HW (by builing my own from components, most
>   likely), and use LIRC and a shell script I already wrote for
>   Hauppague WinTV PVR '350 that has fairly full "amixer" control via a
>   remote;
> 
> * Buy an additional WinTV PVR '350 or '250 (do they both have remotes?),
>   and put it into every box where I might use MPlayer, and use
>   abovementioned shell script;
> 
> * Buy a dumb terminal (anybody have any free adm3a's and/or Wyse terminals
>   laying about?) and put it next to every seat where I might use
>   MPlayer, and have a mute login;
> 
> * Buy more computers, and have an extra computer next to every mplayer
>   playing computer;
> 
> * Go to another computer in another room and press mute.  Currently
>   this is what I do, and it is a big pain!

How about another solution:

* Buy a non-sucky soundcard where zero really means zero. :)

> Hmm, I just thought of an easy hack:
> 
> * system("amixer sset PCM mute");

Since when does everyone have amixer???

Rich