Volume icon musings

hhh · 2016-07-06 04:53:25

Actually, I think our clinging onto volumeicon has been a hinderance. I'm using pasystray with xfce4-volumed, everything works.

How about trying to add a left-click slider to pasystray?

johnraff · 2016-07-06 06:05:43

hhh wrote:

...clinging onto volumeicon...

It's only just been suggested to bring in. Volti is still the default.

I didn't like pasystray that much to be honest. Less of what I wanted and a great deal of stuff I didn't care about.

Anyway, I don't see this as necessarily a major bug. It just seems to need pulse audio to be up and running before it starts. How important is it for that volume cotrol to be present instantly?

Last edited by johnraff (2016-07-06 06:07:47)

hhh · 2016-07-06 06:27:28

What I meant is that volti and volumeicon both offer a left-click volume slider control. pasystray has the same function (adjust and mute volume from the panel) but you hover and scroll to change volume and xfce4-notifyd displays both a progress bar and a text notification. Middle click mutes and unmutes the icon flawlessly without needing the XF86VolumeMute keybind (on my box, at least).

If you don't have a scroll bar, left click>Volume Control... opens pavucontrol with the active sound stream's slider focused, just left/right arrow to adjust volume, Esc key to exit.

Less of what I wanted and a great deal of stuff I didn't care about.

It provides a way to adjust and mute volume from the panel via a mouse or touchpad, isn't that what we need? What are we trying to provide to our users, what you or I want in sound features or a sound setup that works OOTB for most users? We need a volume slider and we absolutely don't want menu items for server, sink and source?

pulseaudio is meant to be part of a DE... GNOME, MATE, Cinnamon and KDE all implement it pretty perfectly. Instead of messing with applets for alsa, why not use the one available that was designed for pulse outside of the major DEs?

As pasystray is now, it's fine, better than what we have, I think, with volti and one XF86 entry in rc.xml (which breaks my mute key when using xfce4-volumed, btw). If someone or a group can hack it to move the menu options to right-click only and add a left click slider, so much the better.

If pulse is a must, then let's go with the tools that work OOTB. If a user can't adapt to those tools, then we can suggest options to give them what they're looking for.

/2 cents

johnraff · 2016-07-06 06:42:23

Fair enough. The issue with volumeicon being that it might need a lot of sleep to start up?

My complaints about pasystray (just tried it again)

Keyboard volume adjustment does not work, even with xfce4-volumed installed and running.
Hover brings up a pale grey popup full of totally arcane data of no interest to an average user.
No configuration of the user interface.
Scrolling volume brings up another geeky info bar, no usual notification bar.
Left and right click bring up the same menu, whose options again offer a wealth of total geek-fodder.
Two clicks to get to pavucontrol.
The whole thing's ugly.

I thought you cared about stuff like that?

PS personally, I'm not bothered about a slider, but some people might want one.

Last edited by johnraff (2016-07-06 06:50:28)

johnraff · 2016-07-06 06:55:15

hhh wrote:

If pulse is a must, then let's go with the tools that work OOTB.

Volumeicon is perfect IMO.

hhh · 2016-07-06 06:59:58

I do care about stuff like that, I'm hoping that by raising options we'll come to the best compromise.

I'm cool with volumeicon OOTB if we can get it to fire up reliably on boot, that's my only real issue ATM. A long sleep time is fine once but would be tedious on a day where someone is logging in and out a lot.

Even though the applet discussion has gone on since this project started, the plus side is we're armed with all sorts of options. Choose your imperfection!

johnraff · 2016-07-06 07:07:28

hhh wrote:

A long sleep time is fine once but would be tedious on a day where someone is logging in and out a lot.

Hmm... maybe we can detect whether it's a first login and give the long sleep only in that case? With a re-login it's not needed. On find some test for the state of pulseaudio?

Choose your imperfection!

hhh · 2016-07-06 07:19:41

Speaking of which, I forgot all about the pnmixer backport...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=315

I'll be damned, it's in stretch now...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=315

-edit- Dad, can we keep it (I mean maybe we should revisit it)? If it's good maybe make an exception, one binary backported from stretch by default?

hhh · 2016-07-06 07:39:56

pnmixer for the win now that it's in Debian. More features, it's what #! used, it starts flawlessly from boot with just a few seconds of sleep, it's working perfectly without openbox keybinds (I am using our backported volumed package). I like it.

xaos52 · 2016-07-06 10:45:16

What were the problems again we were having with volti?
I searched for it but it is in so many places that it is hard to find a summary.
There is a more recent version of volti available on testing, which should be usable as it is on stable, since it is a python script.
Does it solve the problems we have?

volti is maintained on github: here

hhh · 2016-07-06 15:06:41

@xaos, volti has the same bug volumeicon has... middle click mutes but does not unmute. The applet unmutes the alsa sink (sorry if my teminology is wrong) but pulse stays muted. Alsa only mutes the Master channel, pulse sees that and mutes both Master and PCM. alsa unmutes Master, pulse sees that and unmutes Master...

You have two alsa kcontrols (maybe more) in the active pipeline: "Master" and "PCM" (this might be different on your h/w but the principle is the same). As these are both in the pipeline, both affect the level of sound heard (i.e. they are multiplied together and muting either one will result in a mute overall). When you middle click on the kmix tray icon, it mutes only the "Master" control in alsa. In the background however, Pulse notices a "change from alsa" with regards to the Master control's mute status. It detects it as being muted and then implements it's own logic to say, "if Master is muted, so should PCM be". Pulse does this because some h/w can have leakage when not all controls in the pipeline are muted (e.g. you may still have a hum that can be audible). So this is then fed back into kmix (as it also notices a change from alsa and reflects that in the GUI). So the outcome of this is that muting Master causes both Master and PCM to be muted, but unmuting Master, does not affect the mute status of PCM so Pulse still sees the sink as a whole as muted. Only when you unmute both Master and PCM in kmix does pavucontrol show the sink as a whole to be unmuted.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=285601#c8
https://bugs.launchpad.net/xfce4-volumed/+bug/883485

pnmixer doesn't suffer this fate.... "There is no official PulseAudio support at the moment, but it seems that PNMixer behaves quite well anyway when PA is running." (from the author's github).

Horizon_Brave · 2016-07-06 17:11:37

The sound architecture in linux seems to be the last hold out that systemd hasn't yet "fixed". It seems like such a layered mess.

Looking at the progress of volumeicon in the debian tracker, it hasn't been updated in a while..
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/volumeicon

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-07-06 17:42:48

xaos52 wrote:

What were the problems again we were having with volti?

The program fails to start if the machine in question has more than one sound card and the analogue card is not set as the default device in /proc/asound/cards

Horizon_Brave wrote:

The sound architecture in linux seems [...] like such a layered mess.

+1

By way of comparison, in OpenBSD the sound stack is integrated into the base system and all I have to worry about is mixerctl(1) -- it is beautiful

Horizon_Brave · 2016-07-06 18:19:03

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

xaos52 wrote:
What were the problems again we were having with volti?
The program fails to start if the machine in question has more than one sound card and the analogue card is not set as the default device in /proc/asound/cards
Horizon_Brave wrote:
The sound architecture in linux seems [...] like such a layered mess.
+1
By way of comparison, in OpenBSD the sound stack is integrated into the base system and all I have to worry about is mixerctl(1) -- it is beautiful

hehe, well there is alsactl command... Is the problem we're discussing here, mostly centered around the gui side of volume control? I mean all of this is really not an issue if this were being done in a non gui environment? So the issue starts basically with whatever front end leeches onto pulse audio?

johnraff · 2016-07-07 02:52:41

I think the choice of volume icon applet, while it's been done before, is not totally irrelevant, especially since new versions of some of the candidates have come out in since we last looked at it.

Moving to "Development".

johnraff · 2016-07-07 02:54:49

hhh wrote:

@xaos, volti has the same bug volumeicon has... middle click mutes but does not unmute.

Volumeicon doesn't have that bug if the alsa-pulse config file is added. It doesn't help volti unfortunately.

...and yes, there's pnmixer too, now in stretch. Maybe it could be backported to Jessie, as an alternative to a rebuilt volumeicon? It worked OK in CrunchBang, though might have needed xfce4-volumed.

Last edited by johnraff (2016-07-07 03:00:19)

hhh · 2016-07-07 03:18:13

johnraff wrote:

...and yes, there's pnmixer too, now in stretch. Maybe it could be backported to Jessie, as an alternative to a rebuilt volumeicon? It worked OK in CrunchBang, though might have needed xfce4-volumed.

That's what I'm suggesting, it has my vote. It backports with ease, BTW.

hhh a few posts up wrote:

pnmixer for the win now that it's in Debian. More features, it's what #! used, it starts flawlessly from boot with just a few seconds of sleep, it's working perfectly without openbox keybinds (I am using our backported volumed package).

I'll upload a stretch backport for testing, but for now you can test it with my Ubuntu backport, it's the same version...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=315

johnraff · 2016-07-07 04:06:45

^It installed OK (Maintainer still shown as Philip Newborough), but to get notification bars to appear it's necessary to install the backported xfce4-volumed. The tooltip that shows volume % disappears as soon as you scroll - no problem if you've got notification bars I guess.

Will test the startup behaviour vis-a-vis volumeicon.

EDIT: If you enable hotkeys and notifications in the last two tabs then xfce4-volumed is not needed at all.

EDIT2: So now we've got two alternatives: the rebuilt volumeicon or backported pnmixer, both look good - major thanks to the developers.

Last edited by johnraff (2016-07-07 06:43:43)

hhh · 2016-07-07 14:02:25

johnraff wrote:

^It installed OK (Maintainer still shown as Philip Newborough), but to get notification bars to appear it's necessary to install the backported xfce4-volumed.

I noticed this too, jessie's volumed no longer wfm OOTB. This might be a regression on our end somewhere, I just ran the non-PAE ISO Live and everything worked OOTB except for unmuting via the icon. I could unmute via the keyboard button just fine (it would even unmute the "stuck" setting).

johnraff · 2016-07-08 02:39:10

^note EDIT1 above

Last edited by johnraff (2016-07-08 02:39:29)

#1 2016-07-06 04:53:25

Volume icon musings

#2 2016-07-06 06:05:43

Re: Volume icon musings

#3 2016-07-06 06:27:28

Re: Volume icon musings

#4 2016-07-06 06:42:23

Re: Volume icon musings

#5 2016-07-06 06:55:15

Re: Volume icon musings

#6 2016-07-06 06:59:58

Re: Volume icon musings

#7 2016-07-06 07:07:28

Re: Volume icon musings

#8 2016-07-06 07:19:41

Re: Volume icon musings

#9 2016-07-06 07:39:56

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#10 2016-07-06 10:45:16

Re: Volume icon musings

#11 2016-07-06 15:06:41

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#12 2016-07-06 17:11:37

Re: Volume icon musings

#13 2016-07-06 17:42:48

Re: Volume icon musings

#14 2016-07-06 18:19:03

Re: Volume icon musings

#15 2016-07-07 02:52:41

Re: Volume icon musings

#16 2016-07-07 02:54:49

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#17 2016-07-07 03:18:13

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#18 2016-07-07 04:06:45

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#19 2016-07-07 14:02:25

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#20 2016-07-08 02:39:10

Re: Volume icon musings

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