[pulseaudio-tickets] [PulseAudio] #809: Stream volumes should be relative to sink volume

[PulseAudio]

#809: Stream volumes should be relative to sink volume
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 Reporter:  Horazont                     |       Owner:  lennart
     Type:  enhancement                  |      Status:  new    
Milestone:                               |   Component:  daemon 
 Keywords:  stream volume relative sink  |  
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 Hi all,

 What is currently happening:
 Assume I have one sink which is normally at 23% volume.
 I use some apps, like pidgin (instant messaging), things which perform
 short outputs of sounds (their streams are at 23% too).
 Now I increase the sink volume to a higher volume, say 60%.
 Moreover, I have my music stream which is at 23% now, while the sink is at
 60%.
 Then, somebody sends me a message in pidgin. This leads to two things.
 First: There is a small distorted noise sound, just a few milliseconds
 long, at the beginning of the sound played by pidgin. Second: My ears blow
 off. The reason (just a guess): The pidgin stream was relatively to the
 sink (the last time it played) at 100%, because its volume was at 23%,
 just like the sink. Now, the sink is set to 60% and thus the pidgin stream
 is set to 60% too when it respawns. The sudden addition of a stream which
 is set to a (much?) higher volume seems to be the reason for the small
 noise sound (just a guess, again).

 I propose the following:
 The stream volume value should be relative to the one of the corresponding
 sink. That is, when the sink is set to 23% and the stream is set to 100%,
 the result should be as loud as if I had set both sink and stream (or only
 the stream) to 23% in the current setup.
 This would also follow the principle of the least surprise (from my point
 of view), since the sink's volume should be something like the Master
 channel of a mixer, which regulates all other channels too. For this
 regulation there is some kind of emulation currently. When I increase the
 volume of the sink, the volume of the associated streams increases
 dependent on their value relative to the current sinks value. But this
 does not (seem to) work for streams which are currently not playing.

 RFC

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Ticket URL: <http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/809>
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