Pulseaudio in F12

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

Hi,

I made a clean install of Fedora 12, and pulseaudio seems to be behaving
completely different. Any mixer control I have (master, pcm, front ,,,)
affects
the pulse volume slider (looking at pavucontrol). In the past, pulse only
controlled PCM, I guess.

But the worst point is that there is no more application volume memory.
All applications when launched are at full volume, and this is really
annoying ...

Is this a kind of new feature? Is it configurable?

[drago01]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Paulo Cavalcanti  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I made a clean install of Fedora 12, and pulseaudio seems to be behaving
> completely different. Any mixer control I have (master, pcm, front ,,,)
> affects
> the pulse volume slider (looking at pavucontrol). In the past, pulse only
> controlled PCM, I guess.

This is a feature, not a bug.
> But the worst point is that there is no more application volume memory.
> All applications when launched are at full volume, and this is really
> annoying ...

This sounds like a bug.... (works for me though)

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 1:01 PM, drago01  wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Paulo Cavalcanti 
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I made a clean install of Fedora 12, and pulseaudio seems to be behaving
> > completely different. Any mixer control I have (master, pcm, front ,,,)
> > affects
> > the pulse volume slider (looking at pavucontrol). In the past, pulse only
> > controlled PCM, I guess.
>
> This is a feature, not a bug.
> > But the worst point is that there is no more application volume memory.
> > All applications when launched are at full volume, and this is really
> > annoying ...
>
> This sounds like a bug.... (works for me though)

I have two sound cards installed: one onboard and another PCI.

The PCI, the one I do no use very much, works fine. The onboard
is the one which does not save the volumes. Every time I call an application
its master and pcm volume go to the maximum (I see the sliders going to the
top
in alsamixer).

[Jud Craft]

> I have two sound cards installed: one onboard and another PCI.
>
> The PCI, the one I do no use very much, works fine. The onboard
> is the one which does not save the volumes. Every time I call an application
> its master and pcm volume go to the maximum (I see the sliders going to the
> top
> in alsamixer).

This has been addressed by the PulseAudio creator.  You can read more
about it here, see the "PCM is always 100%":

http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PulseAudioStoleMyVolumes

In my lay explanation, Pulse manages the application volumes behind
the scenes.  It still remembers their values, but it doesn't use
Alsamixer to set them.  It tries to use the full volume range of the
hardware (for better volume scaling), so it keeps every other software
linux volume control at full volume, and scales itself internally.

Otherwise, ALSA would say "you can only use the lower 50% of the sound
range of this device".  (PCM at 50%).  Now Pulse decides internally
what volume level is best.

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Jud Craft  wrote:
> > I have two sound cards installed: one onboard and another PCI.
> >
> > The PCI, the one I do no use very much, works fine. The onboard
> > is the one which does not save the volumes. Every time I call an
>
> application
> > its master and pcm volume go to the maximum (I see the sliders going to
>
> the
> > top
> > in alsamixer).
>
> This has been addressed by the PulseAudio creator.  You can read more
> about it here, see the "PCM is always 100%":
>
> http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PulseAudioStoleMyVolumes
>
> In my lay explanation, Pulse manages the application volumes behind
> the scenes.  It still remembers their values, but it doesn't use
> Alsamixer to set them.  It tries to use the full volume range of the
> hardware (for better volume scaling), so it keeps every other software
> linux volume control at full volume, and scales itself internally.
>
> Otherwise, ALSA would say "you can only use the lower 50% of the sound
> range of this device".  (PCM at 50%).  Now Pulse decides internally
> what volume level is best.

Thanks for the explanation.

At least 3 applications are not restoring the volumes:

xmms, mplayer and audacious.

The solution is using the alsa plugin, and not the pulse plugin in these
cases.

Some others work fine, such as rhythmbox, amarok, vlc, and kradio4.

[Michal Schmidt]

Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:05:28 -0200 Paulo Cavalcanti napsal(a):
> Thanks for the explanation.
>
> At least 3 applications are not restoring the volumes:
>
> xmms, mplayer and audacious.

Interesting. Maybe these programs try to be too clever and force the
volume themselves.
> The solution is using the alsa plugin, and not the pulse plugin in
> these cases.
>
> Some others work fine, such as rhythmbox, amarok, vlc, and kradio4.

Michal

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:38:15 +0100, Michal wrote:
> Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:05:28 -0200 Paulo Cavalcanti napsal(a):
> > Thanks for the explanation.
> >
> > At least 3 applications are not restoring the volumes:
> >
> > xmms, mplayer and audacious.
>
> Interesting. Maybe these programs try to be too clever and force the
> volume themselves.

It's not an attempt at being "too clever", but several upstream developers
feel lost in what they have to do or what they have not to do to get
something right. Temporarily, Audacious devlopers have dropped their
"pulse_audio" driver (originally from XMMS) even, since they were of the
impression that "it didn't work anyway". Ubuntu users currently feel
punished with Pulse Audio. With a first bunch of fixes [for volume issues
in Fedora 12 Rawhide, volume decreased for every new song], the driver was
restored again for Audacious 2.2 development. With more recent changes in
Pulse Audio, it seems, more changes are necessary. But Audacious 2.1
cannot reflect external volume level changes in its UI anyway. Its volume
slider cannot move for volume level changes made with external tools.
Only the next release can do that, and it suffers from new bugs (such
as a bug in alsa-lib that will require an update in Fedora, too).

[Michal Schmidt]

Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:12:38 +0100 Michael Schwendt napsal(a):
> On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:38:15 +0100, Michal wrote:
> > Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:05:28 -0200 Paulo Cavalcanti napsal(a):
> > > Thanks for the explanation.
> > >
> > > At least 3 applications are not restoring the volumes:
> > >
> > > xmms, mplayer and audacious.
> >
> > Interesting. Maybe these programs try to be too clever and force the
> > volume themselves.
>
> It's not an attempt at being "too clever", but several upstream
> developers feel lost in what they have to do or what they have not to
> do to get something right. Temporarily, Audacious devlopers have
> dropped their "pulse_audio" driver (originally from XMMS) even, since
> they were of the impression that "it didn't work anyway". Ubuntu
> users currently feel punished with Pulse Audio. With a first bunch of
> fixes [for volume issues in Fedora 12 Rawhide, volume decreased for
> every new song], the driver was restored again for Audacious 2.2
> development. With more recent changes in Pulse Audio, it seems, more
> changes are necessary. But Audacious 2.1 cannot reflect external
> volume level changes in its UI anyway. Its volume slider cannot move
> for volume level changes made with external tools. Only the next
> release can do that, and it suffers from new bugs (such as a bug in
> alsa-lib that will require an update in Fedora, too).

Thanks for the explanation. Before I saw your reply, I played with
audacious-plugins and made a kludge to prevent it from forcing 100 %
volume on startup. It probably breaks something else, I haven't really
tested it too much.

Notice that the documentation for pa_stream_connect_playback strongly
recommends passing NULL as volume.

Index: audacious-plugins-fedora-2.1/src/pulse_audio/pulse_audio.c
===================================================================
--- audacious-plugins-fedora-2.1.orig/src/pulse_audio/pulse_audio.c
+++ audacious-plugins-fedora-2.1/src/pulse_audio/pulse_audio.c
@@ -666,7 +666,7 @@ static int pulse_open(AFormat fmt, int r
     pa_stream_set_write_callback(stream, stream_request_cb, NULL);
     pa_stream_set_latency_update_callback(stream, stream_latency_update_cb, NULL);

-    if (pa_stream_connect_playback(stream, NULL, NULL, PA_STREAM_INTERPOLATE_TIMING|PA_STREAM_AUTO_TIMING_UPDATE, &volume, NULL) < 0) {
+    if (pa_stream_connect_playback(stream, NULL, NULL, PA_STREAM_INTERPOLATE_TIMING|PA_STREAM_AUTO_TIMING_UPDATE, NULL, NULL) < 0) {
         AUDDBG("Failed to connect stream: %s", pa_strerror(pa_context_errno(context)));
         goto unlock_and_fail;
     }
@@ -715,6 +715,7 @@ static int pulse_open(AFormat fmt, int r
     }

pa_operation_unref(o);
+#if 0
     /* set initial volume */
     if (!(o = pa_context_set_sink_input_volume(context, pa_stream_get_index(stream), &volume, NULL, NULL))) {
         g_warning("pa_context_set_sink_input_volume() failed: %s", pa_strerror(pa_context_errno(context)));
@@ -725,6 +726,7 @@ static int pulse_open(AFormat fmt, int r
         pa_threaded_mainloop_wait(mainloop);
     }
     pa_operation_unref(o);
+#endif

do_trigger = 0;
     written = 0;

[Bastien Nocera]

On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 11:36 +0100, Michal Schmidt wrote:
> Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:12:38 +0100 Michael Schwendt napsal(a):
> > On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:38:15 +0100, Michal wrote:
> > > Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:05:28 -0200 Paulo Cavalcanti napsal(a):
> > > > Thanks for the explanation.
> > > >
> > > > At least 3 applications are not restoring the volumes:
> > > >
> > > > xmms, mplayer and audacious.
> > >
> > > Interesting. Maybe these programs try to be too clever and force the
> > > volume themselves.
> >
> > It's not an attempt at being "too clever", but several upstream
> > developers feel lost in what they have to do or what they have not to
> > do to get something right. Temporarily, Audacious devlopers have
> > dropped their "pulse_audio" driver (originally from XMMS) even, since
> > they were of the impression that "it didn't work anyway". Ubuntu
> > users currently feel punished with Pulse Audio. With a first bunch of
> > fixes [for volume issues in Fedora 12 Rawhide, volume decreased for
> > every new song], the driver was restored again for Audacious 2.2
> > development. With more recent changes in Pulse Audio, it seems, more
> > changes are necessary. But Audacious 2.1 cannot reflect external
> > volume level changes in its UI anyway. Its volume slider cannot move
> > for volume level changes made with external tools. Only the next
> > release can do that, and it suffers from new bugs (such as a bug in
> > alsa-lib that will require an update in Fedora, too).
>
> Thanks for the explanation. Before I saw your reply, I played with
> audacious-plugins and made a kludge to prevent it from forcing 100 %
> volume on startup. It probably breaks something else, I haven't really
> tested it too much.
>
> Notice that the documentation for pa_stream_connect_playback strongly
> recommends passing NULL as volume.

This looks correct, you're never supposed to restore volume yourself
when using PulseAudio.

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:43:10 +0000, Bastien wrote:
> > Notice that the documentation for pa_stream_connect_playback strongly
> > recommends passing NULL as volume.
>
> This looks correct, you're never supposed to restore volume yourself
> when using PulseAudio.

Which is exactly my fix that went into Audacious 2.2 before:
http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/devel/audacious-plugins/audacious-plugin...

[Tomasz Torcz]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 11:36:01AM +0100, Michal Schmidt wrote:
> Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:12:38 +0100 Michael Schwendt napsal(a):
> > On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:38:15 +0100, Michal wrote:
> > > Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:05:28 -0200 Paulo Cavalcanti napsal(a):
> > > > Thanks for the explanation.
> > > >
> > > > At least 3 applications are not restoring the volumes:
> > > >
> > > > xmms, mplayer and audacious.
> > >
> > > Interesting. Maybe these programs try to be too clever and force the
> > > volume themselves.
> >
> > It's not an attempt at being "too clever", but several upstream
> > developers feel lost in what they have to do or what they have not to
> > do to get something right. Temporarily, Audacious devlopers have
> > dropped their "pulse_audio" driver (originally from XMMS) even, since
> > they were of the impression that "it didn't work anyway". Ubuntu
> > users currently feel punished with Pulse Audio. With a first bunch of
> > fixes [for volume issues in Fedora 12 Rawhide, volume decreased for
> > every new song], the driver was restored again for Audacious 2.2
> > development. With more recent changes in Pulse Audio, it seems, more
> > changes are necessary. But Audacious 2.1 cannot reflect external
> > volume level changes in its UI anyway. Its volume slider cannot move
> > for volume level changes made with external tools. Only the next
> > release can do that, and it suffers from new bugs (such as a bug in
> > alsa-lib that will require an update in Fedora, too).
>
> Thanks for the explanation. Before I saw your reply, I played with
> audacious-plugins and made a kludge to prevent it from forcing 100 %
> volume on startup. It probably breaks something else, I haven't really
> tested it too much.

Mplayer needs similiar patch: 
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2009-October/077999.html

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Michal Schmidt  wrote:
> Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:12:38 +0100 Michael Schwendt napsal(a):
> > On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:38:15 +0100, Michal wrote:
> > > Dne Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:05:28 -0200 Paulo Cavalcanti napsal(a):
> > > > Thanks for the explanation.
> > > >
> > > > At least 3 applications are not restoring the volumes:
> > > >
> > > > xmms, mplayer and audacious.
> > >
> > > Interesting. Maybe these programs try to be too clever and force the
> > > volume themselves.
> >
> > It's not an attempt at being "too clever", but several upstream
> > developers feel lost in what they have to do or what they have not to
> > do to get something right. Temporarily, Audacious devlopers have
> > dropped their "pulse_audio" driver (originally from XMMS) even, since
> > they were of the impression that "it didn't work anyway". Ubuntu
> > users currently feel punished with Pulse Audio. With a first bunch of
> > fixes [for volume issues in Fedora 12 Rawhide, volume decreased for
> > every new song], the driver was restored again for Audacious 2.2
> > development. With more recent changes in Pulse Audio, it seems, more
> > changes are necessary. But Audacious 2.1 cannot reflect external
> > volume level changes in its UI anyway. Its volume slider cannot move
> > for volume level changes made with external tools. Only the next
> > release can do that, and it suffers from new bugs (such as a bug in
> > alsa-lib that will require an update in Fedora, too).
>
> Thanks for the explanation. Before I saw your reply, I played with
> audacious-plugins and made a kludge to prevent it from forcing 100 %
> volume on startup. It probably breaks something else, I haven't really
> tested it too much.
>
> Notice that the documentation for pa_stream_connect_playback strongly
> recommends passing NULL as volume.
> Index: audacious-plugins-fedora-2.1/src/pulse_audio/pulse_audio.c
>
> --- audacious-plugins-fedora-2.1.orig/src/pulse_audio/pulse_audio.c
> +++ audacious-plugins-fedora-2.1/src/pulse_audio/pulse_audio.c
> @@ -666,7 +666,7 @@ static int pulse_open(AFormat fmt, int r
>     pa_stream_set_write_callback(stream, stream_request_cb, NULL);
>     pa_stream_set_latency_update_callback(stream, stream_latency_update_cb,
> NULL);
> if (pa_stream_connect_playback(stream, NULL, NULL,
>
> PA_STREAM_INTERPOLATE_TIMING|PA_STREAM_AUTO_TIMING_UPDATE, &volume, NULL) <
> 0) {
> if (pa_stream_connect_playback(stream, NULL, NULL,
>
> PA_STREAM_INTERPOLATE_TIMING|PA_STREAM_AUTO_TIMING_UPDATE, NULL, NULL) < 0)
> {
>         AUDDBG("Failed to connect stream: %s",
> pa_strerror(pa_context_errno(context)));
>         goto unlock_and_fail;
>     }
> @@ -715,6 +715,7 @@ static int pulse_open(AFormat fmt, int r
>     }
> pa_operation_unref(o);
>
> +#if 0
>     /* set initial volume */
>     if (!(o = pa_context_set_sink_input_volume(context,
> pa_stream_get_index(stream), &volume, NULL, NULL))) {
>         g_warning("pa_context_set_sink_input_volume() failed: %s",
> pa_strerror(pa_context_errno(context)));
> @@ -725,6 +726,7 @@ static int pulse_open(AFormat fmt, int r
>         pa_threaded_mainloop_wait(mainloop);
>     }
>     pa_operation_unref(o);
> +#endif
> do_trigger = 0;
> written = 0;

Your patch almost worked. Audacious starts at the right volume level.
However, when audacious volume slider is hit for the first time,
the volume goes to the maximum again.

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 1 Dec 2009 08:34:29 -0200, Paulo wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Michal Schmidt wrote:

[patch]
> Your patch almost worked. Audacious starts at the right volume level.
> However, when audacious volume slider is hit for the first time,
> the volume goes to the maximum again.

I've explained that earlier in the thread.

Audacious' volume slider does not reflect volume level changes made with
external tools. Only with Audacious 2.2 that will become possible.
[That also means that when you start Audacious, it does not know what
volume level to show with its volume slider as it hasn't connected with
Pulse Audio yet.]

[Kevin Kofler]

Paulo Cavalcanti wrote:
> But the worst point is that there is no more application volume memory.
> All applications when launched are at full volume, and this is really
> annoying ...

Looks like the "flat volumes" "feature":
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-June/msg01810.html

Kevin Kofler

[Lennart Poettering]

On Sun, 29.11.09 12:58, Paulo Cavalcanti ([e-mail]) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I made a clean install of Fedora 12, and pulseaudio seems to be behaving
> completely different. Any mixer control I have (master, pcm, front ,,,)
> affects
> the pulse volume slider (looking at pavucontrol). In the past, pulse only
> controlled PCM, I guess.

http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PulseAudioStoleMyVolumes
> But the worst point is that there is no more application volume memory.
> All applications when launched are at full volume, and this is really
> annoying ...

That is not true, unless you reconfigured PA in some way...

Lennart

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Sun, 29.11.09 12:58, Paulo Cavalcanti ([e-mail]) wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I made a clean install of Fedora 12, and pulseaudio seems to be behaving
> > completely different. Any mixer control I have (master, pcm, front ,,,)
> > affects
> > the pulse volume slider (looking at pavucontrol). In the past, pulse only
> > controlled PCM, I guess.
>
> http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PulseAudioStoleMyVolumes
> > But the worst point is that there is no more application volume memory.
> > All applications when launched are at full volume, and this is really
> > annoying ...
>
> That is not true, unless you reconfigured PA in some way...

You are right. This is true for some applications only,
and I found so far three applications needing to be fixed:

xmms, audacious and mplayer.

I installed audacious 2.2 and it is behaving much better.

xmms-pulse plugin was written by you, but I do not know if you are willing
to patch xmms.

mplayer will be fixed eventually.

Now that I understand what you have done, it seems to be a good idea indeed.

[Paulo Cavalcanti]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Paulo Cavalcanti  wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> > On Sun, 29.11.09 12:58, Paulo Cavalcanti ([e-mail]) wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I made a clean install of Fedora 12, and pulseaudio seems to be behaving
> > > completely different. Any mixer control I have (master, pcm, front ,,,)
> > > affects
> > > the pulse volume slider (looking at pavucontrol). In the past, pulse
> >
> > only
> > > controlled PCM, I guess.
> >
> > http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/PulseAudioStoleMyVolumes
> > > But the worst point is that there is no more application volume memory.
> > > All applications when launched are at full volume, and this is really
> > > annoying ...
> >
> > That is not true, unless you reconfigured PA in some way...
>
> You are right. This is true for some applications only,
> and I found so far three applications needing to be fixed:
>
> xmms, audacious and mplayer.
>
> I installed audacious 2.2 and it is behaving much better.
>
> xmms-pulse plugin was written by you, but I do not know if you are willing
> to patch xmms.
>
> mplayer will be fixed eventually.
>
> Now that I understand what you have done, it seems to be a good idea
> indeed.

mplayer and audacious have been fixed upstream.

Regarding xmms,  I patched it myself:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=559777

I hope the patch is applied ...