ubuntu 14.04 - sound icon is always blocked

[Andreas Angerer]

In Ubuntu 14.04

Whenever the sound is muted the icon is red (so it seems to recognize blocked sound). However there is definitely nothing playing and also pavucontrol, shows that no sound is playing. So it seems to be a bug

package: indicator-sound 12.10.2+14.04.20140401-0ubuntu1

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

Thanks for reporting this bug. Unfortunately I cannot reproduce it on my system. Can you provide more detail on when it occurs? Does it happen right after startup or after you've played something and then muted the sound? Which apps are you using?

Note that the icon will stay red for five seconds after the sound that was blocked has stopped playing.

[Andreas Angerer (andreas-angerer89)]

Thanks for answering.

Well, it is grey right after startup (also in the lightdm-greeter) however whenever I play something (doesn't matter if I use aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav or vlc or whatever) it stays red.
This happens also in a GuestSession...

[Andreas Angerer (andreas-angerer89)]

Ok it seems, that this occurs only if the sound is muted at the login-screen. If the sound is unmuted at lightdm-greeter everything works...

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

I'm sorry, I still cannot reproduce it, even when muting from the login screen. Did you see my comment about the five-second timeout?

[Andreas Angerer (andreas-angerer89)]

Yeah I did. Ok weird, happens for me every time. Well let's see if someone else is experiencing the same beahviour

[Andreas Angerer (andreas-angerer89)]

If I run once pulseaudio -k (after which the client immediately restarts) it works as well...

[Andreas Angerer (andreas-angerer89)]

Heureka! I found out which app(s) trigger this behaviour (so it might not be a indicator-sound bug):

Starting skype with a LoginSound (this well known waking up sound) seems to trigger exactly the described behaviour. The sound icon goes red and stays red even if the sound already subsided...

Strangely JDownloader seems to have the same effect. Although this app doesn't have sound at all it seems to do exactly the same. As far as I was able to test it, it's the only Java application that does this

So this is something everyone should be able to reproduce, I'm pretty sure this is something not specific on my system

[Ben Wolsieffer (benwolsieffer)]

I have the same problem. I have not tested it, but it seems likely that Skype is causing it for me too.

[Ben Wolsieffer (benwolsieffer)]

I have verified that this is caused by Skype, because the icon immediately turns gray when I close quit Skype.

I suspect that this might be a bug in Skype because sometimes it makes a buzzing noise that does not stop until it is restarted. Maybe this bug is related to the that problem.

[Andreas Angerer (andreas-angerer89)]

Disabling the login sound for skype is a workaround but not a fix.
Unfortunately filing a bug report for skype is pretty useless since they are most probably not going the fix those bugs in the linux version...

Nevertheless I think we can close this bug !?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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