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

[CJ van den Berg]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 12:47:28AM +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> Volume control UIs show the sink's virtual volume in the sink
> slider. You can change the reference volume by changing the sink slider
> position. In which case the volume of all sink inputs is adjusted in a
> way that the virtual volume will match the reference volume. You can
> change the virtual volume also by changing the stream slider
> positions, which then doesn't have any effect on the reference volume.

And this is the core of the entire problem IMHO. The sink volume slider
*displays* one value (the virtual volume level) and *adjusts* another
(the reference volume level).  This really, really counter-intuitive and
a major cause for confusion.  A UI element should never ever carry two
different meanings.

> Now, I must admit that this all is a bit hard to grasp. And thus not
> exactly the definition of easy to use. We had a couple of discussions
> on this very ML about this. So far noone came up with a way to fix
> this in a way that would be completely convincing. 

I still think that my suggestion to drop the virtual volume altogether
in the UI and have the sink volume slider display the reference volume
is the right solution.

At very least I think it will reduce the confusion level dramatically
and you won’t have to explain the flat volume logic over and over again.

Then maybe you’ll have time to figure out a ‘completely convincing’
solution. ;-)

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