[pulseaudio-discuss] Volume jumps to 100% on KDE startup in KDE 4.4.0-4.4.1

[Dwight Paige]

On 03/14/2010 06:17 PM, Colin Guthrie wrote:

> Pulseaudio expects full control over the mixer levels and what you are
> seeing here is a feature called "Flat Volumes" in action. At some point
> the volume of the logout sound has been saved to be 22% (perhaps not
> exactly that but some value). In order to achieve that result, PA will
> try whenever possible to use h/w volume adjustments rather than software.
>
> As PA is a mixer, it will take the loudest volume of any running stream
> and use that as the hardware volume and then attenuate in software any
> other streams so that they are set to their relative values.
>
> e.g. say I have a stream running at 50%, then the h/w will be set to 50%
> and the stream will not be attenuated at all in software. If I then play
> a second stream at 75%, the h/w volume will increase to that value and
> the current running stream @50% will be attenuated in software so that
> it stays at 50% overall.
>
> So it's not exactly unusual to see the h/w volume jump around. What is
> more interesting is why the logout sound is played more quietly... Can
> you make sure the "System Sounds" slider in pavucontol has a sensible value?

Sound system volume is now set to 70%. I believe original setting after 
install was 0%.

> Chances are trashing your ~/.pulse folder in the existing setup will
> have much the same effect as a reinstall... you may have to do the same
> for the "kdm" user too if there is such a user - there is for gdm, but
> don't know that much about kdm personally.

I'll check this out in my original Fedora partition.

> It's kinda expected behaviour in a way, so it makes sense. There are a
> few unknowns relating to how the data got there in the first place but
> the generally described behaviour sounds plausible enough.

> If possible try and grab "pacmd ls" when the shutdown sound is playing
> as it will say what "stream-restore.id" is being used for the logout
> sound itself which may explain where the lower volume setting came from.
>
> Col

I did run 'pacmd ls' while startup sound was playing. I can't interpret 
for myself contents of 'pacmd ls' so I created a pastebin of it:


http://pastebin.ca/1841461

-- 
Thanks,
Dwight Paige