Comment 9 for bug 197957

I'd like to second a request for such a package.

I've been setting up a home theatre PC running Ubuntu, and I found it very frustrating that Ubuntu's version of the libasound2-plugins package does not support a52 output, when Debian's does. I was connecting the computer to an external amplifier that only supported AC3 over S/PDIF, and not uncompressed PCM which is what Ubuntu attempted to by default.

This had the effect of making sound not work on the computer at all, which we can all agree is important for watching films (that are not silent films). Audio not working is a /major/ issue, I would not consider it only 'wishlist'. It would be like saying "I wish my car would start".

The same computer works absolutely fine with Windows 7, as it supports selecting digital audio transports very easily, and will automatically transcode audio formats that are not supported by your amplifier into one it does.

I had a look back at the old changelogs for the package, and the original reason for removing support was because it would make the LiveCD smaller. I think this is rather hypocritical as we're now at a point where libasound2-plugins depends on pulseaudio (whether you want to use it or not), and many other packages have pulled in larger dependencies than parts of ffmpeg. The library is also being used by other packages such as libgstreamer0.10-ffmpeg, which is essential for the playback of many video formats (which play out-of-the-box in Windows 7).

Even better than just having a -extras package, make the entire package modularised (ie: *-pulseaudio, *-jack, *-a52 etc.) or pull off the pulseaudio support library into a separate source package entirely such that this one can be moved into universe and we can have all the support turned on.