sync problems with Volume
 

I am running xfce4 I have the xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin (volume icon) on my menu bar, I have pavucontrol installed. whenever I am running music through mplayer. When I adjust the volume it does not work properly. I can take it up to 100% and still it is like "I still cannot hear it that well" so I open pavucontrol and it shows it at like way low 20% ect. but NOT 100% like that volume ICON does.

Is their a way to keep that in sync?

When you refer to the "volume button," what volume button are you referring to precisely? If it's an XFCE volume button, it could be that it does not affect the output of a program run in a terminal directly from the command line--I don't really have a way of testing that tonight.

Try changing the setting in pavucontrol, then testing how that affects the output in mplayer.

the word "button", and the phrase "volume button" is no where in any part of my post. whatsoever.

that is what I said I did, I have to use pavucontrol to reset the volume to match the ICON that from the xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin (volume icon) on my menu bar. in the add new items it is the pulseaudio plugin speaker icon that goes up on the menu bar that the wheel on the mouse can turn up and down the volume of whatever is playing sound.

I apologize for misreading. I must have made the leap from the phrase "volume icon."

Thanks for straightening me out.

When you open the full pavucontrol panel and change the volume, does that affect the mplayer volume? If not, try opening alsamixer, it it's present (and it is on Slackware), and testing the volume there. Let us know whether that makes a difference.

further details,

I run mplayer through cli then I use the volume icon to adjust the volume. I can turn it up to 100% through the usage of the volume icon. the increase in volume is barley noticeable. That is when I finally open up pavucontrol then using pavucontrol I increase the volume through that means. One can then see that message box showing the slider for the volume moving to show an increase in volume as well.

they both work. only they do not work together like I believe they are suppose to. if you open up pavucontrol and watch its volume slider then hover the mouse arrow over the volume Icon and move the mouse wheel to adjust the volume you can see pavucontrol slider moving along with it. only that they do not match up.

The volume Icon will indicate 100% while pavucontrol will indicate maybe 50% - it varies. they are not in complete sync with each other.

I have to manually adjust it through pavucontrol to get it to match the volume Icon indicator. Then eventually it goes out of wack again.

Now that I am looking at it again, my brain thought, maybe it is because pavucontrol controls multiple inputs separately, so it cannot get itself together on that. Their has to be a break in communication between pavucontrol and xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin to have xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin tell pavucontrol which medium(item, ie, the webpage, youtube, mplayer, sending sound through the card all at the same time) when one brings one into foucs in order to change its volume it does not update pavucontrol properly so that it knows what actual level that one is set at so it can respond accordingly.

exxample:
youtube volume set at 10%
mplayer volume set at 50%

if I bring the youtube video into focus then use the volume Icon to change the volume. I actually have to open up pavucontrol to adjust mplayer separately to over come youtube which has now three means of volume control, 1. the video on the webpage, 2 the volume icon, and 3 pavucontrol all can control the volume separately.

BUT

if one then shuts down youtube leaving only mplayer and system sounds to deal with in pavucontrol. it still does not reflect the same percent of volume between the two, and with me it is always going out of sync.

I know it maybe getting too complicated to understand just by reading this. the bottom line is that mplayer and pavucontrol and the volume icon (xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin) are not in sync in the percent of volume it is actually allowing to go to the speakers, with pavucontrol having the last say in the matter.

I made a note to myself to try to do some testing on this tomorrow.

Here's what I did:

I logged out of Fluxbox and back into XFCE on Slackware --Current. In the default XFCE interface, I did not see a volume button.

I started mplayer playing an audio file. Then I opened pavucontrol. I was able to control the volume using the slider bar labeled "Built-in Analog Stereo" on the "Output Devices" tab. Note that I am using external speakers with a desktop box.

I don't know whether this will help, but I had no problems.

did you add the paulseaudio plugin to the bar? it gives you that speaker ICON - (stuck on button)

I don't think you're understanding but that is cool. I do not think it can be made to do what it is I was talking about anyways due to pavucontrol being able to control more then one sound source at a time.