Changing sound left/right balance impacts on front/back

[Mathias]

What happens:

If an Asus STXII 7.1 sound card is installed and another output device is present, there is a strange behavior in the Gnome audio settings.

After the first start of Ubuntu the Asus soundcard is not the default device. This can be selected in the Gnome settings. If a different speaker configuration is selected now. E.g. stereo instead of 5.1 or vice versa, the selection jumps from the Asus output device back to the original output device. The Asus sound card can then be selected again and the corresponding speaker configuration will fit now.

If 5.1 is selected as the mode, there is a second problem.
Moving the balance slider (left / right) moves the slider (front / back) slightly as well.
The slider for lfe is grayed out, even when I enable the lfe remixing in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
In the speaker test, all 5.1 channels work fine, including the lfe.

For better illustration I made a screen video. (see attachment)

This is probably a general bug in Gnome - it has been occurring since Ubuntu 18.x and affects all distros that use Gnome since then. Unfortunately I was not able to make a report in Gnome, because the registration on the Gnome site does not work anymore... Maybe you have a good contact to the Gnome team?

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Release 20.04)
Package: gnome-control-center (1:3.36.1-1ubuntu5)

Expected behavior:
It should be possible to select the sound card and the setting should be retained even if the speaker configuration is changed. Furthermore, the balance sliders should not influence each other.
Lfe slider should work. (And in a perfect world this would also activate lfe remixing and gives the user a cross over frequency option, but this is just an idea :)

BR,
Mathias
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-04-23 (7 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
Package: pulseaudio
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de_AT:de
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_AT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-28.32-generic 5.4.30
Tags: focal
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-28-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups:

_MarkForUpload: True

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command only once, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 1876267

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Mathias (humpix)]

apport information

[Mathias (humpix)]

apport information

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-control-center (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Hui, could you check if the issue there would be addressed by the recent g-c-c fixes you proposed?

[Hui Wang (hui.wang)]

Looks like that g-c-c fix couldn't work on this bug.

@Mathias,

Could you please test the g-c-c with that fix, it is in the: https://launchpad.net/~hui.wang/+archive/ubuntu/switch-audio gnome-control-center 1:3.36.2-0ubuntu1++testswitch

[Mathias (humpix)]

Hi Hui, Thanks!
The fix resolve the problem with the mode selector. Now I can switch between stereo and 5.1 without falling back to the default audio device. The problem with the sliders is still there... BR, Mathias

[Hui Wang (hui.wang)]

Oh, that is really good, I thought it will not fix the 1st issue in the bug description.

About the 2nd issue in the bug description, we have not met this issue before and have no idea on it yet.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for testing, the profile selection issue is being discussed in bug #1885673 already, I'm going to repurpose this report for the slide problem then (and please next time open a report by issue, otherwise it's making difficult to proper follow up on the changes)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you maybe report the slider balance issue upstream on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues ?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you also test with pavucontrol if the balance issue happens there?

[Mathias (humpix)]

Thanks Sebastien - i have reported it there to.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/1045

No Problems with pavucontrol. Thats my workaround atm.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks!