[pulseaudio-discuss] Input sound random detection.

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Thu, 2016-08-11 at 09:41 -0300, Gustavo Duarte wrote:
> If the first thing I do after boot, is open settings, the audio
> metter 
> shows activity, as following:
> 
> 1) Boot
> 2) Open gnome sound settings, audio meter show activity.
> 
> If the first thing I do after boot, is record with parecord, the
> record 
> work fine, and when open settings after that, audio meter show
> acrivity.
> 
> 1) Boot
> 2) parecord
> 3) CTRL+C to close parecord
> 4) A WAV file is generated with sound recoreded.
> 5) Open gnome sound settings, audio meter show activity.
> 
> 
> In order to get pactl list output while sound settings are open, and 
> there's no audio meter activity, i had to break sound as following:
> 
> 1) Boot
> 2) Open Skype, call Echo / Sound Test Service.
> 3) Try record a msg.
> 4) No msg was hear.
> 5) Open Gnome sound settings, audio meter no show activity.
> 6) While sound settings is open, get output of pactl. (attach 
> after-break-setting-open.pactl)
> 7) Change the volume input level on Gnome setting, just a bit, and
> audio 
> meter start to showing activity.
> 8) While sound setting remain open, get output of pactl 
> (after-change-level-setting-open.pactl)

The pactl outputs show that you raised the volume from 16% to 20%. Is
that consistent with what you saw in the sound settings UI? The pactl
output doesn't show anything that would be obviously broken in the non-
working case.

Why is the volume in the broken state sometimes 100% and sometimes 16%?
Does Skype change the volume? If it does, does it also change it if you
put "flat-volumes = no" to ~/.config/pulse/client.conf?

If you record something with parecord while the sound settings are
open, and the volume meter doesn't move, does that work?

> After check again, and see the wav file size, I noticed, that
> arecord 
> worked. To may playback the wav I had to reboot, let me show you the 
> sequence.
> 
> 1) boot
> 2) Run pasuspender -- arecord --device=plughw:0 test1.wav
> 3) CTRL+C, to close previous cmd.
> 4) aplay test1.wav. Nothing is hear.
> 5) ls test1.wav show 101662 bytes.
> 6) reboot
> 7) aplay tes1.wav, I can listen the audio recorded.

Weird. If aplay doesn't play the file, does paplay?

> In a short, doing this latest test, is clear that the thing is breaking 
> the sound is the Skype, the question is why, and why if change input 
> level volume, the problem is fixed ?
> 
> Any thought ?

Comparing the system state before and after Skype could show something.
You did a similar test already in the beginning, and that didn't show
anything else than that there were differences in volume, but nothing
was muted, so I don't really expect anything interesting to show up,
but since this is a bit more controlled test than in the beginning,
it's worth a shot. Here are the steps:

1) Boot
2) Open gnome sound settings, verify that the sound meter shows
activity.
3) Close gnome sound settings.
4) Run "amixer -c0 > before_skype.amixer".
5) Run "pactl list > before_skype.pactl".
6) Open Skype, call Echo / Sound Test Service.
7) Try record a msg.
8) No msg was hear.
9) Run "amixer -c0 > after_skype.amixer".
10) Run "pactl list > after_skype.pactl".
11) Open gnome sound settings, verify that the sound meter doesn't show
activity.

-- 
Tanu