#1 2016-07-04 03:50:47

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,558

Website

PulseAudio: Allow applications to have independent volume levels

This is a feature of PulseAudio, that for some reason is disabled by default.

The fix is easy though, Google or just check the Arch Wiki.

Edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf or ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf, and change the "flat-volumes" line:

flat-volumes = no

Reboot.
One annoyance less.

Last edited by johnraff (2016-07-04 05:10:25)

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cloverskull

Member

Registered: 2015-10-01

Posts: 348

Re: PulseAudio: Allow applications to have independent volume levels

Ah, interesting. I'd often wondered why individual applications had to have volume control provisions built into the logic of the program's code to handle independent volume levels. Interesting, those applications which included such a feature were likely fixing a problem that wasn't really a problem but a configuration issue of pulseaudio.

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,558

Website

Re: PulseAudio: Allow applications to have independent volume levels

I think this is about allowing apps that want to set independent volume levels to do so. Without that setting, every time an app's volume is changed it affects the master volume level.

EDIT: in practice it might not work out quite like that, but give it a try anyway. It worked well for me on Wheezy, but not quite sure about Jessie...

EDIT2: If there's only one sound app running (eg VLC), it looks as if Master is still going up and down along with VLC's volume, but have YouTube on Firefox running too, and the volumes now seem to be independent.

Last edited by johnraff (2016-07-04 07:47:35)

---

...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

cloverskull

Member

Registered: 2015-10-01

Posts: 348

Re: PulseAudio: Allow applications to have independent volume levels

Ah, that's strange. I seem to recall a setting in mpd, for example (perhaps ncmpcpp but not sure) wherein you could change the default behavior of setting master volume from within the application to one that was specific to the application instead.

But it wasn't a pulse setting, it was within whatever the audio player was, and it was also not default.