I also absolutely hate flat-volumes. Often I have trouble getting an
application loud enough, and discover that it's too low in the mixer.
The idea of flat volumes is to avoid a global volume, but the way it
interacts is super confusing and unlike any other system people use
(except maybe Android, but all of its "content" apps are still coalesced
under one mixer).
That said, apps shouldn't be setting their own Pulseaudio volume in
general. Firefox did that for a while and ran into a similar bug as you
got with Amarok, so they implemented their own internal soft volume
rather than adjusting their Pulseaudio volume.
That said, flat-volume is the upstream default so we might want their
input, as well as looking at what other distros do.
On 09/17/2015 11:59 AM, 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