[pulseaudio-discuss] Per-app flat volume adjustment is highly unintuitive, if mathematically consistent.

[Jud Craft]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Lennart Poettering
<lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> Side-effect of the logic? The fact that all volumes are saved/restored
> relatively to the reference volume is the very core of the logic.

No, no, I didn't mean to say the side effect wasn't that the volumes
were saved/restored, because they obviously need to be...that wasn't
what I meant.  It was a poorly worded statement.

What I meant, was that...To the user, when running one program, the
sink and the stream seem to be the same volume meter.

However, internally, they change two different values (the reference
volume, and the stream volume/factor, respectively).

Since they appear to be the same meter, a user who changes a stream
volume (and watches his output sink change as well) will be a little
puzzled as to why, when the program is closed, his sink (or output
device) magically decides to jump back to its old volume value (ie,
from the stream value back to the reference value).

As far as s/he can see, they didn't tell the volume to jump back to
the old value (and if they've lost track of the reference value
because they've been running one program for so long, they definitely
won't make that connection).  It appears to them that whenever they
stop playing a program or open other programs, their main volume meter
jumps to a random value.

But, does it seem that I have an understanding of how Pulse manages
the reference volume and the streams relative to it?