Gnome-volume-control and -applet do not switch volume controls when new audio output is inserted

[Jamie Lawler]

Binary package hint: gnome-media

Currently, karmic switches audio output automatically to a new output when it is inserted (which is fantastic). I feel it would be made even better if gnome-volume-control were to switch its volume control from the old output to the new one - the one through which sound is currently being outputted.

Often I will insert my USB speakers and want to immediately lower the volume. At the moment I have to right-click on the applet, click "sound preferences", click "output", choose the new output, then change the volume. I would like to be able to simply adjust the volume of the new device through the applet first time, without needed to explicitly select it first.

Using karmic and gnome-media 2.28.1-0ubuntu1.

[Γουργιώτης Γιώργος (aka Gourgi) (gourgi)]

Exactly as explained above that should be the desired behavior

[Jamie Lawler (jamie-lawler)]

A year on this bug still persists in natty.

I think this would be a good candidate for a papercut.

[mahfiaz (mahfiaz)]

Please, someone take a look at this.

I once more describe how to trigger this one:
1. Connect USB speakers (pretty cheap these days)
2. use gnome-volume-control to change output to USB speakers
3. see how your laptops volume buttons work good with these
4. disconnect USB speakers, volume comes from the internal speakers
5. test how volume buttons are still good
6. reconnect USB speakers, sound comes from these
7. but volume buttons still drive internal speakers' volume, so have no effect
As a workaround you need to open gnome-volume-control again (you probably had it closed),
and from output choose internal speakers (which causes the sound to jump to these) and pick USB speakers again. Now everything is as expected. While including the jump of sound, this is a lousy workaround.

So what should gnome-volume-control do? Every time a *previously used*, but simply disconnected (and not chosen to be unused before that) device reappears, it should be selected as default device. Since this is exactly what pulseaudio does, you don't even have to trigger the output change, it is done in pulseaudio anyway (not sure if this is a good or bad thing).

[Craig Magina (craig.magina)]

This is still an issue on trusty. What makes it worse is that the previous volume levels are not saved, so you get 100% volume when you plug in the device.

[Paweł Bylica (chfast)]

The same issue is also for Bluetooth audio devices.