gnome-volume-control chooses oss as default device instead of pulse

[Duncan Hawthorne]

Binary package hint: gnome-media

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
on a toshiba a100-998 laptop
running hardy heron alpha 6 live cd.
the default is currently "Realtek ALC861 (OSS Mixer)" but for this device the volume slider always shivers back to 100%, and none of the track controls do anything (well except the line in track which makes my audio crackle when i turn the volume up, even though i dont have a line in port, probably a seperate issue)
 (note that when i was using gutsy the default was wrong too, but it chose microphone as the default out)
The default should instead be "Playback: ALSA PCM on front:0 (ALC861 Analog) via DMA (PulseAudio Mixer)". This does actually allow you to control the volume.
[ However, even this isnt ideal, it only has one "master" track, as do the other 2 pulse audio channels ("Monitor source of ALSA ....." and "ALSA...."), which means that you cant do something like having the input of the microphone outputing through the speakers. Maybe this is what is supposed to be happening i dont know. At least using pulse actually controls the volume. ]

Another problem which might be related is that gnome-sound-recorder says "Your audio capture settings are invalid. Please correct them in the Multimedia settings." but i will do a seperate bug report about this if necessary.

its easy to change from the default with "right click > preferences" on the panel, or "file > change device" in gnome-volume-control.
The default is still being remembered somewhere as using a usb keyboard volume control keys, the volume still sticks as 100% so i guess it is still trying to control the oss device.

happy to give any more information

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. That should probably be sent on the GNOME bugzilla, they might have a reason to use the oss mixer and there is nobody currently in the ubuntu desktop team dealing with those mixer issues so it's not likely to get changed there

[Tim Skinner (timskinner1)]

I have the same problem with the latest build of Hardy, with a Realtek sound card ( VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA High Definition Audio Controller (rev 10)). Ubuntu selects OSS by default and Playback : ALSA does work, although keyboard controls won't adjust the volume.

[Tim Skinner (timskinner1)]

This is more system wide. In preferences > sound the default mixers are set as OSS, whereas they should be set as pulse audio. All these have to be manually adjusted before sound can be controlled properly with keyboard shortcuts.

[Duncan Hawthorne (duncan.hawthorne)]

yeah i missed that, but when you say system wide, its still a user specific setting.
Changing in preferences > sound >device ... all of the options change to pulse audio is what is required, and should be set by default.
the panel volume control does the right thing, the full volume control does the right thing, keyboard shortcuts work, sound recorder no longer complains about multimedia setting (not sure if it can actually record)
the fact that there is one volume track when using pulseaudio is what is expected i guess for pulseaudio, as it controls stuff itself. Good.

so this fixes everything, but should be set by default.
this is a defaults bug, which should be within the scope of ubuntu. As pulseaudio wil be installed on all hardy heron machines they should all default to controlling pulseaudio, whatever the specific sound card they have. This should be a fix for everyone, not just my specific sound card. BY setting the default to always be pulseaudio, whatever the device, no sound card can have this specific problem.

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

It looks like there are two bugs here;
     that pulseaudio isn't the default selection and

    the oss volume control doesn't work.

Dave