Amarok + PulseAudio: volume control changes global volume

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Nikos Chantziaras at 23/06/10 10:22 did gyre and gimble:
> On 06/23/2010 11:30 AM, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>> 'Twas brillig, and Nikos Chantziaras at 21/06/10 21:49 did gyre and gimble:
>>> When I change the volume in Amarok, it changes the global volume of the
>>> whole system instead of just Amarok's volume.  Currently selected Phonon
>>> backend doesn't matter.
>>>
>>> Gentoo AMD64
>>> KDE 4.4.4
>>> Phonon-kde 4.4.4
>>> Phonon 4.4.2
>>> PulseAudio 0.9.21.2
>>> Amarok 2.3.1
>>
>> When you say it "changes the global volume" does this have a practical
>> impact?
> 
> It means it changes the "Master" volume.  If I change volume in Amarok, 
> "Master" in alsamixer changes with it.  That means, changing volume in 
> Amarok will change my sound card's hardware mixer volume.
> 
> As for the practical impact, I'm sure I don't have to explain how grave 
> of an annoyance it is having Amarok's volume knob being tied directly to 
> ALSA's "master" hardware volume knob :)

Did you read the links I sent? These explain *exactly* what the flat
volume logic does and what it's meant to achieve.

Why do you even care that master volume control in alsa is changing
(other than for the reason of "it didn't used to"!)? I don't mean to
troll here, it's a genuine question! I mean, if you're using PA, why are
you looking directly at alsa controls anyway? Mixer applications for PA
are generally more useful and shield users from the various reasons why
alsa sucks: http://people.redhat.com/alexl/files/why-alsa-sucks.png :p


Anyway, this is a feature of PA. Any application (not just Amarok) that
integrates properly with PA's per-application volume streams will be
subject to the same method of operation. It's quite similar to the Flat
Volume logic in Windows Vista and generally speaking users quite like
it. It's enabled by default and you can disabled it if you don't like it.

Personally, I like the way things are now nicely integrated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY5e000Jydc

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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