Disable PulseAudio flat volumes to prevent it from pushing volume level to max

[Lennart Poettering]

On Thu, 17.09.15 20:59, Germano Massullo (germano.massullo at gmail.com) wrote:

> 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

This is a non-sensical request. If an app uses the mixer APIs to set
the volume of something to very loud, that's what happens. Flat
volumes have nothing to do with that.

I mean, the app you are using shouldn't set the volume like this, and
that's the key here. If you turn off flat volumes you win about
nothing, you just work around this specific app. Soon the next app
will come along and play the same game with the actual device volume,
and you won *zero*.

Don't mix flat volumes with misbheaving apps. Turning off flat volumes
is a hack around the broken apps at best, and completely pointless..

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat