application-specific volume control affects master volume

[Janne Hyötylä]

Binary package hint: gnome-media

Changing application-specific volume in gnome-volume-control changes the master volume.
Muting works as intended per-application.

Tested with banshee and totem as sound playing applications.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Aug 9 16:23:02 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-volume-control
Package: gnome-media 2.27.5-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-5.24-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-media
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-5-generic i686

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Architecture: i386
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]
   Subdevices: 2/2
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
   Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: janne 8730 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: janne 8730 F...m pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xfe9fc000 irq 21'
   Mixer name : 'SigmaTel STAC9205'
   Components : 'HDA:838476a0,102801f9,00100204 HDA:14f12c06,14f1000f,00100000'
   Controls : 25
   Simple ctrls : 16
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.16~test4-0ubuntu4
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-5.24-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-5-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare vboxusers

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the issue is not a gnome-media one but a pulseaudio design decision, 0.9.16 should make things better and change other volumes too

[LoonyPhoenix (loonyphoenix)]

A design decision? Does it mean it's a feature, not a bug? I don't see how this could be beneficial, or useful, or convenient. There is master volume and then there is per-application volume and they shouldn't mix. What was the reason for this design decision, the rationale? I think this "feature" should be disabled be default by Ubuntu, if it indeed is an upstream decision.

[Dana Goyette (danagoyette)]

I agree... flat volumes are horrible, in terms of user experience.

I managed to blast myself the other day, by turning up Totem's volume (because it was too quiet) ... and oops, now it turned up the sound card, too! BAM! I'm just glad I didn't have headphones on at the time!

Windows (Vista, more specifically) doesn't do that. OS X doesn't do that. Try changing the volume in iTunes on OS X... it doesn't suddenly make the whole sound card louder. In my opinion, this misfeature needs to be disableable from the user interface... and disabled by default.

The way I think of volumes: Sound Card X is at some proportion of its max volume, and app Y is at some proportion of (whatever volume the sound card it set at). Vista works this same way; the default mixer just ofbuscates it a bit. Well-behaved apps don't change the system volume.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Not confirming the issue there on current karmic:

- open totem
- right click on the mixer icon in the notification area, open settings dialog
- change the volume using the totem slider

The totem volume change in the mixer but the master volume stay where it's set

[LoonyPhoenix (loonyphoenix)]

On current Karmic, used the same steps and reproduced. Does it depend on different hardware?

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Also on up-to-date karmic, can still reproduce the issue using Sebastien's steps.
My hardware is listed above.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

did you tweak anything to your pulseaudio configuration?

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Well, I installed pavucontrol, and also ran alsamixer once or twice and played around with the controls there (mainly because of Bug 410814 ).

If you tell me how to restore everything to default, I can do that and test again.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Not sure what could create the issue but I don't confirm there, it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Sebastien, could you check what
$ grep flat-volumes /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
gives you?

According to gnome, it's not a bug (as you also originally mentioned), but I'm wondering why you can't reproduce it.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

$ grep flat-volumes /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
; flat-volumes = yes

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Same here, so it's not that.

[terry_gardener (terry-gardener)]

i have just checked this on my system which is fully updated, and i noticed this while ago.

i have done some investigative work with regard to this to fine out when it does it.

when you turn the application volume up, the master volume level changes to match the application volume. if you reduced the app volume level the master stays where it is.

the affect is worse when using the volume control within the app itself for example i tried totem.

pa volume control stated that master volume at 50%, app volume at 40% and within the player the volume was set also at 50%

changed the volume from within the app itself to 54%

and now pa volume control states that app volume jumped to 81% and master volume jumped also to 81%.

so changing the volume from within totem by 4% inceased the app volume by 41% and master volume by 31%.

my view is the app volume stated in pa volume control and gome volume control should be the same as in the app itself so this doesn't happen.

[terry_gardener (terry-gardener)]

also did the command above

grep flat-volumes /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
; flat-volumes = yes

[LoonyPhoenix (loonyphoenix)]

@terry_gardener:

This behaviour is deliberate (except for the Totem thing; that might be a real bug). It's called "flat volumes", and, incidentally, changing the line in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to
flat-volumes = no
turns it off.

The new way it's working is, in my opinion, slightly more logical. Look here for a description of how it should work now:
https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2009-August/004786.html

And look here for discussion of this feature in Ubuntu:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-August/009227.html

Personally, I'll disable this feature and I don't think it should be included in Karmic without at least an easy way to disable (and I mean a GUI, not changing some obscure parameter in some text configuration file you need root privileges to edit). Plus, in my opinion, to be useful, this feature needs at least a way to set the maximum volume so that applications wouldn't be able to go beyond it. Other than that, I think it's a simplification of the volume logic which should be encouraged, provided it doesn't reduce the usability.

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

You can read here[1] more about the flat-volumes feature. If you read the whole thread, you can see that the feature itself seems to have advantages over the old system. As also discussed in the thread, at the moment it is more of an UI "bug" or usability issue, but there is also no clear and easy solution for that yet. The PA people are aware of it.

[1] http://<email address hidden>/msg03723.html

[Lars Volker (lv)]

I just found this bug report and am "affected" as well. I actually used inears, when i psyched myself by an application turning master-volume up. I've read the first few posts of the conversation mentioned by Janne and it seems totally unintuitive to me. Is there a way to opt in favor of changing the behaviour in karmic.

Setting flat-volumes = no and restarting pulseaudio fixed it for me.

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Not anymore an issue since we are using flat-volumes as default. Is Fix Released the correct status now?

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Meant to say of course "we are using flat-volumes=no as default"