* \section create_sec Creating
*
* To access a stream, a pa_stream object must be created using
- * pa_stream_new(). At this point the audio sample format and mapping of
- * channels must be specified. See \ref sample and \ref channelmap for more
- * information about those structures.
+ * pa_stream_new() or pa_stream_new_extended(). pa_stream_new() is for PCM
+ * streams only, while pa_stream_new_extended() can be used for both PCM and
+ * compressed audio streams. At this point the application must specify what
+ * stream format(s) it supports. See \ref sample and \ref channelmap for more
+ * information on the stream format parameters. FIXME: Those references only
+ * talk about PCM parameters, we should also have an overview page for how the
+ * pa_format_info based stream format configuration works. Bug filed:
+ * https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72265
*
* This first step will only create a client-side object, representing the
* stream. To use the stream, a server-side object must be created and
* pa_stream_set_state_callback(), and wait for the stream to enter an active
* state.
*
+ * Note: there is a user-controllable slider in mixer applications such as
+ * pavucontrol corresponding to each of the created streams. Multiple
+ * (especially identically named) volume sliders for the same application might
+ * confuse the user. Also, the server supports only a limited number of
+ * simultaneous streams. Because of this, it is not always appropriate to
+ * create multiple streams in one application that needs to output multiple
+ * sounds. The rough guideline is: if there is no use case that would require
+ * separate user-initiated volume changes for each stream, perform the mixing
+ * inside the application.
+ *
* \subsection bufattr_subsec Buffer Attributes
*
* Playback and record streams always have a server-side buffer as
* (which is recommended) the server will choose the same
* value as tlength here.
*
- * \li minreq - Minimum free number of the bytes in the playback
+ * \li minreq - Minimum number of free bytes in the playback
* buffer before the server will request more data. It is
* recommended to fill in (uint32_t) -1 here. This value
* influences how much time the sound server has to move
* PA_STREAM_ADJUST_LATENCY if you want to control the overall
* playback latency for your stream. Unset it if you want to control
* only the latency induced by the server-side, rewritable playback
- * buffer. The server will try to fulfill the clients latency requests
+ * buffer. The server will try to fulfill the client's latency requests
* as good as possible. However if the underlying hardware cannot
* change the hardware buffer length or only in a limited range, the
* actually resulting latency might be different from what the client
* requested. Thus, for synchronization clients always need to check
* the actual measured latency via pa_stream_get_latency() or a
- * similar call, and not make any assumptions. about the latency
+ * similar call, and not make any assumptions about the latency
* available. The function pa_stream_get_buffer_attr() will always
* return the actual size of the server-side per-stream buffer in
* tlength/fragsize, regardless whether PA_STREAM_ADJUST_LATENCY is
int pa_stream_is_corked(pa_stream *s);
/** Connect the stream to a sink. It is strongly recommended to pass
- * NULL in both \a dev and \a volume and not to set either
+ * NULL in both \a dev and \a volume and to set neither
* PA_STREAM_START_MUTED nor PA_STREAM_START_UNMUTED -- unless these
* options are directly dependent on user input or configuration.
*
* an absolute device volume. Since 0.9.20 it is an absolute volume when
* the sink is in flat volume mode, and relative otherwise, thus
* making sure the volume passed here has always the same semantics as
- * the volume passed to pa_context_set_sink_input_volume(). */
+ * the volume passed to pa_context_set_sink_input_volume(). It is possible
+ * to figure out whether flat volume mode is in effect for a given sink
+ * by calling pa_context_get_sink_info_by_name().
+ *
+ * Since 5.0, it's possible to specify a single-channel volume even if the
+ * stream has multiple channels. In that case the same volume is applied to all
+ * channels. */
int pa_stream_connect_playback(
pa_stream *s /**< The stream to connect to a sink */,
const char *dev /**< Name of the sink to connect to, or NULL for default */ ,