Hi All,

I recently reinstalled Debian Jessie with xfce 4. All works fine except the mute/unmute function. When I mute the sound, the Master, Headphone, Speaker and PCM channels are muted. But when I unmute the sound only the Master channel is unmuted and all others remain muted.

I fixed this issue in my previous installation, but I can't remember how.

I tried searching the web without success.

which app are you using to do that? the terminal alsamixer, or some gui? show us?
also, isn't xfce4 using pulseaudio?

The gui program I'm using to control sound is xfce4-mixer and the terminal program is alsamixer. When I mute the Master channel, in either one, they both respond by muting said four channels.

Both xfce4-mixer and alsamixer show "HDA Intel (Alsa mixer)" as my sound card.


Thanks for your reply.

tbh, i think it does (i might be wrong though).
it's an extra layer on top of alsa and might well be responsible for the behavior.
so instead of alsamixer, please use something like pavucontrol.

I installed pavucontrol and it does mute/unmute properly. But I can't control pavucontrol with my keyboard (mute, vol-, vol+) buttons.

I have made some steps though.

By setting the command 'amixer set Master toggle' to my keyboard mute-button, I'm now able to mute/unmute without a problem.

When I lower the volume to zero with my keyboard 'vol-' button, all 4 channels get muted and don't unmute when I use the 'vol+' button. If I press the keyboard 'mute' button they do unmute now.

So it's a workaround, but it works.

Thanks for your time Ondoho.

please understand that if you use pulseaudio, you should leave alsa settings (alsamixer, amixer ...) alone.
do all your adjustments via pulseaudio controls.

Ok.
Thanks.