Can't change settings for applications that only play sounds for very short periods of time

[Sjors Gielen]

Binary package hint: pavucontrol

There are many applications that often play very short sounds. I think they usually leave their connection to Pulseaudio open all the time, but for example, KDE applications (most notably those using KNotify) open a connection to PulseAudio, play a short sound, and then close the connection again. This makes the application appear for a second in pavucontrol, then disappear; a time lapse too short to change settings (for example, move the stream to a different output channel).

My expected behavior here is that the application stays around for, for example, half a minute, maybe grayed out or something to indicate that the application isn't connected anymore. I think this should be fixed in Pavucontrol, but maybe I'm wrong and Pulseaudio itself should be changed to fix this bug. Feel free to re-target if need be.

This could also be considered a papercut, maybe, but I think all 100 papercuts are already chosen, and a first-time user probably won't see it on his first day of using Ubuntu since Pavucontrol could be considered a more advanced application.

[John Stephenson (jmdsdf)]

I have another suggestion to incorporate into when fixing this bug. Please include a quick "Show All Applications" drop down choice so we can see every application that has interacted with PulseAudio.

In the mean time, is there any existing application that can edit the ~/,pulse/[whatever]stream-volumes.tdb file? tdb-tool can read the file, but the data structure is binary.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Gauthier (gauthier.d)]

Are there any news on that matter?