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Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 320

Pulseaudio automatically unmutes if a new source is available [SOLVED]

Hi!

I noticed a super annoying "feature" of PulseAudio. Suppose I have muted everything my sound card. I noticed PulseAudio will automatically unmutes the sink whenever it detects a new audio source!

I suppose it can be convenient for i*t users who don't know how to use a mixer, but not so if I've specifically told my computer to be muted and want it to stay that way.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Mute your audio devices (via PulseAudio)
2) Make sure your Firefox (or *insert any application here*) does not have an active pulseaudio source
3) Go to Youtube (or *insert any application here* which will begin to produce audio) and start playing a video with sound.

Observed behaviour: Sound starts to play!
Expected behaviour: It should stay quiet, g****t!

Some applications seem to need a restart to trigger this even if they don't have an active source, such as Clementine. But this is reproducible with any application I've tried.

I suppose this has something to do with module-device-restore, but pulseaudio documentation is not helpful to determine, what / who is the culprit.

Posting here in case  someone has a solution. I'm quite certain I will find one, and will post it here.

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2019-08-25 19:20:49)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,738

Re: Pulseaudio automatically unmutes if a new source is available [SOLVED]

Can't repro, and restore device shouldn't have anything to do with that (that will only trigger during initial device detection, and should ensure that your device stays muted, if you've rebooted for example) If anything module-stream-restore, however that also shouldn't affect the device stream. One common potential culprit is

load-module module-role-cork

if you have that enabled in your /etc/pulse/default.pa you might try to disable that. Did you ever manually adjust anything in this regard (manual configs, check ~/.pulse), or use some auto module loading application like pulseeffects or paprefs or so?

What are the outputs of

systemctl --user status pulseaudio
pacmd list-sinks
pacmd list-sink-inputs
sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*

before and after a trigger situation?

Last edited by V1del (2019-02-03 21:12:21)

Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 320

Re: Pulseaudio automatically unmutes if a new source is available [SOLVED]

Hi V1del!

There shouldn't be nothing special on my setup. I tried commenting suspicious modules in defaults.pa, and uncommented flat-volumes = no in daemon.conf  (and killed / restarted pulseaudio after changes). No dice. Then I did some more searching and found this bug report which apparently has been moved here. It seems this could actually be a Kernel bug after all - or that's what is claimed in that report.

I'm using Realtek also, in my case ALC1150, but AFAICT this uses the same driver as the original reporters.

And yes, commenting out /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/iec958-stereo-output.conf contents does seem to work around the issue.

What are the outputs of

systemctl --user status pulseaudio
pacmd list-sinks
pacmd list-sink-inputs
sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*

before and after a trigger situation?

Since I think I've determined this is a bug (in Kernel or Pulseaudio), I think these are not useful - but In case you have some other thoughts / ideas, just ask and I will filter out the personal stuff in these (my LAN sinks etc... AFAICT they give no output which would suggest what is going on)...

Thanks for your help!

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2019-02-03 21:51:13)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,738

Re: Pulseaudio automatically unmutes if a new source is available [SOLVED]

No if that's the fix and problem that's alright. If you feel this is sufficient in regards to this topic, you can mark it as [SOLVED] by editing your title (you might have to shorten it a little) , or you can leave it as is and update once a proper fix is out.