Help, please, before I go deaf!

Since the most recent upgrade, which installed pulseaudio, I am unable to control the default (power-on) audio level. It always goes to 100%, resulting in a deafening login jingle!!!

Previously, I would use alsamixer as root to set initial volumes. Although that still goes through the motions, the volumes reset to 100% on reboot. Kmix does the same. Although I can set sensible levels, they get lost on rebooting!

How do you set default levels with pulseaudio?

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Pete

See this and set flat-volumes = no in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

Thanks for the pointer! That didn't work on its own, but it did point me to the cause of the problem!

I needed to go into System Settings / Application and System Notifications / Manage Notifications from the KDE kickoff button, and then select the player settings tab. Setting that to 50-60% got things working as desired!

It appears that under pulseaudio - even if you've set flat-volumes=no and set alsamixer - having the kde player settings at 100% will over-ride whatever default settings you *think* you have made! This is the opposite behaviour to non-pulseaudio systems!

Grrr!

But thanks for pointing me towards the wiki which gave me the hint!

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Pete

Thank you for posting this for Slackware-current users running KDE. This had been driving me crazy over the last few days. A future update to SlackDocs on setting up Alsa/Pulse audio should mention this little, but very important tip

By the sounds of it, the symptoms suggest that kde notifications is setting the volume of the sink rather than its sink-input, otherwise "flat-volumes:no" ought to protect against that (to the best of my understanding of the topic).


BTW, if you configure pulse to use an alsa pcm dmix device for output, you end up with a setup supporting concurrent multi-user output with each user having an independent sink volume control. You can then use 'alsamixer -c 0' to set the hardware controls which will effectively work as a cap on maximum volume. You retain all the sound routing features of pulse, but you will lose the pulseaudio 'ports' functionality that is used to manage the device hardware settings and you will have to resort to changing card settings the traditional way with 'alsamixer -c 0'. I actually find I prefer it that way, as I'd rather not have pulse second-guessing what hardware settings I want enabled on my primary soundcard.

If anyone is interested let me know and I'll post how I have my system configured.

I must confess to not being at all familiar with pulseaudio. I've never needed it previously, but it looks as if it is going to become unavoidable, so I'd better know at least the basics!

As far as I can make out, setting flat-volumes=no should allow various applications to set their volumes independently *relative* to a master setting. The problem with KDE is that the player that sets the volume of the notifications, if left at its default setting of 100, over-rides any settings made by alsamixer / kmix, and ramps the master volume up to 100%.

I have never previously had to touch this setting. I've always set alsamixer (as root) to provide a sensible level, and that was that. Now, under pulseaudio, that "sensible setting" gets over-ridden by the (non-root!) volume setting for KDE's notifications. And as that has been raised, and all the other apps set their levels relative to that master, everything is now far too loud.

It isn't an issue once you have found it and know how to adjust it, but its a non-obvious adjustment! As gordydawg says, it can drive you crazy!!!

Is my summary of what is happening here correct?

Over to the experts!

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Pete

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I use XFCE. About every second time I boot up I can actually hear Skype log on no problem with my speakers. YouTube is unbearably loud at these times
The other times I boot up I need the headphones to hear anything (Skype, YouTube, anything).
I set flat-volumes = no in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and this made no difference

Gordie, I only use XFCE occasionally, so I can't offer any hard advice, but presumably - like KDE - it has some way of setting the volume of system notifications. If you can find that, it might assist with finding a solution to your issues. It could also be Skype itself, of course! Anything that messes with the basic level settings can cause the issue.

I'm still finding levels in some applications to be erratic - notably youtube - but this could be just a question of adjusting each one once. Once set, it should then be ok going forward.

At least, I hope so!

P.S. I notice there is something called pamixer installed with pulse audio. Although not a graphic mixer like alsamixer, it does seem to have some effect on pulseaudio. Typing "pamixer" at a command prompt will list its functions. Maybe setting its level with a script during logon may help?

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Pete

I don't use audio notifications or sound events if I can help it. Silence is golden. Here is what is working for me since I stumbled upon it yesterday afternoon:

PulseAudio plugin set for the absurd level of 153 volume)
/usr/sbin/alsactl store used manually only as needed (/etc/rc.d/rc.local)
/usr/sbin/alsactl restore used as an entry (/etc/rc.d/rc.local_shutdown)

Hi Gordie,

Interesting. I used to use alsamixer and alsactl to set my default levels, but found that pulseaudio over-rode these. Even if you don't use sound events or notifications, it is possible that there is a "default" setting for these somewhere in the boot process. In my case it was in the KDE initialisation - a setting I'd never had to use previously.

Have you tried using pamixer in either rc.local or in bashrc or similar? It looks as if it might be designed for that purpose. Haven't tried it myself yet, but its on my "todo" list!

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Pete

I have been experiencing the same problem on Debian 9 Stretch AMD64 KDE Plasma 5, maybe the solution is good for Slackware too.
Apparently the problem comes out using Phonon Backend VLC, solution = use Phonon Backend GStreamer

1 members found this post helpful.

1) You are responding to a thread that's been idle for two and a half years.

2) The gstreamer phonon backend is the only one that Slackware ships.

1 members found this post helpful.

My only wish was to be useful, I cancel that post now.