[pulseaudio-discuss] Volume control interactions

[Dylan]

It seems to me that the behaviour of various volume controls and their 
interactions is wrong. Let me explain ...

Altering the level of the master for a Output Device results in changes 
being applied to all Playback Streams associated with that output. This 
is the case whether the volume control is accessed via a global keyboard 
shortcut or via a slider in a volume control app (kmix and pulse audio 
volume control both show the same behaviour.)

Also, altering the level of some streams will also affect the Device master, 
whereas other streams can have their level changed without affecting the 
master.

For example: playing audio from Playback Streams amarok and vlc to Output 
Device 'PCM2900', starting with levels PCM2900: 33%; amarok: 24%; vlc: 24%

Increase PCM2900 level to 40% results in vlc rising to 29% and amarok to 
30%.

Altering vlc level subsequently to 79% results in the PCM2900 level rising 
to 79% also.

I would, possibly naively, expect changing the device level to have no 
effect on the level of a stream, and vice versa. The current behaviour makes 
it impossible to maintain a balance between playback streams, and is as if 
(from the point of view of a physical mixer) the Master slider and channel 
input sliders were connected with elastic links.

I hope I have made sense and am not completely misunderstanding how the 
system is intendeto work, it is simply that IMHO each level slider (or pair) 
should be fully independent of eachother.

Dylan

Setup: OpenSuse 11.3; KDE 4.5.0; pulseaudio 0.9.21-9.2; kmix-
pulse-4.4.75svn1125114-1.5

-- 
“ ‘... but there is so much else behind what I say. It makes itself known to 
me so slowly, so incompletely! ...’ ”