volume change sound effect (audio-volume-change) does not play when volume is changed

[Dylan McCall]

Binary package hint: indicator-sound

First of all, a quick introduction to the (unfortunately not very well-known) component we have had for a few releases now, called libCanberra, which is used for sound events in the same style as icons.

In upstream GNOME, any time an application changes the system volume it plays the "audio-volume-change" sound effect. This is done per application, using ca_gtk_play_for_widget.

The sound is unimplemented in Ubuntu's default sound theme, but absolutely exists in most others. (FreeDesktop and Moblin are the two we should particularly care about, since they are available for installation in Lucid). With the FreeDesktop theme, it constitutes an _extremely_ helpful "pop" noise to indicate how loud the volume now is.

Here is some sample code from gnome-settings-daemon ./plugins/media-keys/gsd-media-keys-manager.c in the update_dialog function:

ca_gtk_play_for_widget (manager->priv->dialog, 0,
    CA_PROP_EVENT_ID, "audio-volume-change",
    CA_PROP_EVENT_DESCRIPTION, "volume changed through key press",
    CA_PROP_APPLICATION_ID, "org.gnome.VolumeControl",
    NULL);

The same is also used for the upstream volume control applet. Although it only affects users with different sound themes, losing this feature is a regression. (And limits what can be done with Ubuntu's own sound theme, if that gets updated at some point).

Please implement this feature in indicator-sound when a volume change is triggered.

[Dmitry Agafonov (dmitry-agafonov)]

Fresh install of Lucid RC on EeePC 901:
Sometimes it plays noisy sound with constant high volume when changing volume using mouse wheel (not sure about Fn buttons).
Can it be related?

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

This should work when changing the volume with hardware volume keys, because we are using gnome-settings-daemon's media keys plugin. (Maybe we didn't back when this bug was filed.)

I don't think the sound menu should emit these sounds when changing the volume with the volume slider.