Since this funny project has already been reviewed by some other blogger, I thought I could drop some word as well.
Some time ago in the #rapache channel Jason, which is the author of many of the nice features found in Rapache, came up with the idea of leveraging PulseAudio and do something with it.
Well.. that was not a bad idea. I mean, until today PulseAudio brought lots of brokeness to Ubuntu (not to say Fedora) users but .. can you say to have enjoyed any benefit from it ? Even one, I mean. After a few days he came up with a little project he called EarCandy.
Ear Candy to the rescue. This simple utility sits in your traybar, watches on the windows on your desktop and manages the sounds for you. Let’s say for example you’re listening some music. Then suddenly a skype call comes. Ear Candy will lower the music automatically for you until the skype call is ended. Same (with fries) for movies and whatever else you want.
Ear candy features a nice configuration panel which lets you configure settings for each application. Since the preset apps are very few, you may want to add new ones. In order to do that, open that app, make it produce some sound, then click the “+” button and select it from the list you see.
As an added bonus, you can make it dinamically alter the application’s left/right volume balance, based on the screen position of its window.
You can download the alpha from launchpad with this command:
bzr branch lp:~killerkiwi2005/eyecandy/0.2/
bzr branch lp:~killerkiwi2005/eyecandy/0.3/
Update: the 0.3 version now appear usable, and requires *much less* configuration of the applications. (it autodetects quite everything)
Keep in mind it’s just a 0.2 0.3 release ! (and yes, the launchpad project is named eyecandy, not earcandy. yes, that’s misleading)
Finally here’s with a demo video [ source ]:
Congrats, Jason ! Hopefully this kind of functionality will be integrated by default in the Gnome desktop someday !
Nice program! If I’d be using more sound programs I’d definitely would use it.
Nice tag btw.
Yeah ! I don’t use many sound programs as well. But you can feel the difference even with muting rythmbox when starting a youtube video. It’s one of those little thingies that makes life easier.
The bad news is that the programs currently considers a sound application which is silent (like an ended youtube video) as producing sounds. The good news is that I will pressure the author to get that right
My tags rock
Keep pressing the author
P.s. That one is the best Ubuntu/Linux related tag I’ve ever seen
Doesn’t want to work:
vadi@ubuntu:~/Programs/eyecandy$ ./ear_candy
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “./ear_candy”, line 16, in
import pypacmd
File “/home/vadi/Programs/eyecandy/pypacmd.py”, line 123, in
import pexpect
ImportError: No module named pexpect
@Vadim, ehm… have you tried sudo apt-get install python-pexpect ?
[...] Ear Candy makes your Gnome Desktop a little bit smarter Since this funny project has already been reviewed by some other blogger, I thought I could drop some word as well. [...]
[...] a leggere sul post originale, l’avrà pur scritto per qualche ragione [...]
This should be pushed upstream – I would love to have this in Sound Preferences! (Fedora developers, please grab this
)
I hope a .deb file is coming soon, cuz I can’t get the bzr working!
//MadsRH
@MadsRH, you need any help ? What doesn’t work ?
I read on Planet GNOME that the PulseAudio developers are going to implement a similar feature. Unfortunately for the developer of EarCandy, this program won’t be needed anymore.
@Sense Hofstede: I read that too. But I highly doubt we will see it before 2 years. Also, it’s not said it will be better, in any way. (to be truthfully, I think it won’t even come close).
This is such a great idea. I downloaded the 0.3 series from launchpad but unfortunately the default configuration on my computer seems to be to fade out all videos as soon as they’re opened regardless of focus. It never touches the volume of audio players. I tried toggling the “Fade” checkboxes but it had no effect.
What does “Fade” do anyway? Does it mean it fades that application’s volume level or does it fade the levels of other applications when that one has focus?
Even deleting the rules had no effect. Even without any rules specified in the window it still faded out youtube videos and videos played locally in MPlayer. Amarok and Banshee running in the background were untouched.
I was about to try it with Xine but it appears I broke something serious mucking about with the rules because now when I start it I get this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “./ear_candy”, line 220, in
ec = EarCandy()
File “./ear_candy”, line 90, in __init__
self.load()
File “./ear_candy”, line 62, in load
client.from_xml(el)
File “/home/jon/0.3/Client.py”, line 173, in from_xml
self.volume_default = int(el.getAttribute(”volume_default”))
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ‘100.0′
Okay, I figured out the error I got had something to do with my settings file. I deleted “settings.xml” in ~/.config/Ear Candy and restarted the application. The program would launch again, hurray!
The rules were a bit tougher to figure out. To get the volume of Amarok to turn down when I launched SMPlayer I had to create a whole new rule for it. Just setting “ALSA plug-in [mplayer]” to “Video Player” in the main “application rules” window didn’t do it. In fact, it did the opposite and would lower the volume of the video instead of the music.
I had to click the “Add” button, choose SMPlayer from the applications list and then set it as a “Video Player”. With that rule now in place, Ear Candy immediately began to lower the volume of Amarok. Success!
Hopefully that helps anyone who is reading this and having similar problems. because this is a great idea for a program and I wouldn’t want to turn anyone off from trying it out.
For those of you interested, a new version is available. Here’s the post:
http://www.stefanoforenza.com/earcandy-04-rules/