[pulseaudio-discuss] 100% volume limit bogus

[Sean Greenslade]

On February 7, 2019 4:21:05 PM PST, liebrecht at grossmann-venter.com wrote:
>I found an interesting reason why this 100% Volume policy in
>pavucontrol 
>is actually detrimental.
>
>The sound is very low with the pavucontrol 100% and my keyboard buttons
>
>cannot go past that as that is how pavu controls it.
>
>Its fair, but as soon as I start QEMU, (which uses pulseaudio as sound)
>
>with a windows virtual machine something peculiar happens.
>
>I p-lay music on the linux machine which has nothing to do with
>anything 
>from QEMU.
>Once windows boots up in QEMU, sometimes with no config on my side,
>QEMU 
>pushes the volume omn Linux up way past the maximum of pavucontrol to 
>deafening levels.
>Jeeziz.!
>
>Why this QEMU raising of Linux host volume happens is a mystery to me.
>
>Please read this carefully and consider:
>It is better to have pulseaudio 100% at system absolutely maximum
>volume 
>so that the user can set volume down.
>Since you implemented this 100% restriction that is way too low volume,
>
>other applications like QEMU seemingly finds a way to go to the real 
>maximum which makes your low volume policy severely detrimental.
>
>This policy forces the user to set the hardware output device at almost
>
>maximum, w2hich creates a lot of trouvble if another application finds
>a 
>way around this silly limit and blasts your ears out, as Qemu and 
>windows does.
>Qemu just willy nilly turns up the linux output volume to its correct 
>maximum way way past the imho dangerous and deceptive  pavu lower
>limit.
>
>Give the user full control so they can set their own maximum limit. 
>These non-working and bypassable synthetic limits creates more damage 
>than they intend to prevent.

There is a setting to disable flat volumes, which is probably what you want. See the "flat-volumes" option:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#daemon.conf

--Sean