hi
I can second this. Currently we do this in sonar on versions after
2015.3, which have to be built atm. There are two applications off the
top of my head I know of that will currently do this. They are, kodi
media center, and qemu virtualization software, if you emulate a sound
card of anything other than es1370. I'll add your voip application to
this list, though I don't know what it's called. To disable flat
volumes, edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, and change the "flat volumes" line
from yes to no, and remove the semicolon, which is the comment. Then
restart pulseaudio, either by killing pulseaudio, causing it to respawn
or restart your computer.
I'm not sure what should be done to prevent this. Usually, the only
applications that do this are applications that are not pulse audio
aware. Applications that are use the pulse audio API, and thus don't
jump the volume. I completely agree, this requires a change to pulse
audio, but I've had no luck contacting the pulse audio devs. I go onto
their irc channel, and there's literally no response to queries.
Thanks
Kendell clark
On 09/17/2015 01:59 PM, Germano Massullo wrote:
=======
Definition of flat-volumes from [1] : it scales the device-volume with
the volume of the "loudest" application. For example, raising the VoIP
call volume will raise the hardware volume and adjust the music-player
volume so it stays where it was, without having to lower the volume of
the music-player manually.
=======
Today I had a scary experience with the audio of my computer.
I was listening to music with Amarok, using my headphones... The KMix
volume level was ~ 35%. When I logged into a video conference
application, the volume suddenly reached the 100%. I was shocked, having
the maximum audio level shooted in your ears is a painful experience.
The conference application that triggered PulseAudio pushing volume to
maximum level probably should have never asked the system for a 100%
audio level, but on the other hand, PulseAudio should never allow an
application to make such sudden changes.
To avoid that, you have to set
flat-volumes = no
in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
I found many users stories complaining about this default setting [2]
[3] [4] and you can easily find other by searching "pulseaudio flat
volumes".
I completely agree with user gaggra comment at [3]
<<This is an interesting issue because it is one of the rare times
misbehaving software can /physically hurt you/. You would think that
once that was understood, the design of this sort of behaviour would be
treated in a very conservative, careful manner.>>
Moreover this default setting can cause sound crackling [5].
So I would like to start a discussion about disabling this default
behaviour for the mentioned reasons.
[1]
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio
[2]
https://major.io/2015/06/08/pulseaudio-popping-with-multiple-sounds-in-fe...
[3]
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2rjiaa/horrible_decisions_flat_vo...
[4]
http://awesomelinux.blogspot.it/2013/06/pulseaudios-dynamic-volume-levels...
[5]
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1264177