Hi all. I am not sure, if you are facing the same problem which bugged me a week back (though I am unsure if this is a problem, or a feature), but here it goes like this :: I noted that for the very first time, the pulseaudio sink volume is muted. So, I noted that when I did something like "gst-launch filesrc location=/path/to/mp3" ! mad ! alsasink" I could hear the sound. However, when I did "gst-launch filesrc location=/path/to/mp3 ! mad ! pulsesink" I could not hear the sound. So, I launched "pavucontrol", unmuted the sound in "Output Devices" section, and volia . I could hear sounds from thereon using "pulsesink" (and "alsasink:, of course). Is this the same case as yours..? Regards, Ajay <div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 10:53 PM, Frank Wilson <<a href="mailto:fajwilson@gmail.com" target="_blank">fajwilson@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi, I have noticed that the master channel volume is set to zero and muted when I login to gnome3 on my arch linux vm. After looking at various things such as storing and restoring alsa settings, I determined the volume settings get changed when pulseaudio starts. To fully isolate the cause I did a test with a bare non-graphical login (no gnome session, no login manager, no other sound program). Here is the session log: [frank@flint ~]$ date Mon Jun 4 18:03:26 BST 2012 [frank@flint ~]$ alsactl init 0 # reset my card, just to be sure Found hardware: "ICH" "SigmaTel STAC9700,83,84" "AC97a:83847600" "0x8086" "0x0000" Hardware is initialized using a generic method [frank@flint ~]$ speaker-test <<<<< CAN HEAR SOUND >>>>> [frank@flint ~]$ amixer -c0 > <a href="http://amixer.org" target="_blank">amixer.org</a> [frank@flint ~]$ pulseaudio --start -vvvvv I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup successful. [frank@flint ~]$ speaker-test <<<<< CANNOT HEAR SOUND! >>>> [frank@flint ~]$ amixer -c0 > amixer.pulse I attach <a href="http://amixer.org" target="_blank">amixer.org</a>, amixer.pulse and pulse_syslog.log.gz (the relevant portion of my syslog file, where pulseaudio has logged its stuff). Could anybody explain what is causing the problem and how I should go about fixing it? Thanks, Frank _______________________________________________ pulseaudio-discuss mailing list <a href="mailto:pulseaudio-discuss@lists.freedesktop.org">pulseaudio-discuss@lists.freedesktop.org</a> <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-discuss" target="_blank">http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/pulseaudio-discuss</a> </blockquote></div>