Arch Linux

wpkzz

Member

Registered: 2020-01-10

Posts: 47

pulseaudio hides all the nice bars of alsamixer

Well, I have allways frowned upon Pulseaudio until now, but with nCovid19 going on and everything done on zoom with or without my aproval, it seems that I got sucked into installing it. Arch being Arch, of course it works and it seems o.k. but still not to my liking, so my question is twofold.
The thing that I do not like:
Where are my alsamixers?
As i had this computer runing, alsamixer had  a very detailed volume control, with separate controls for left, right, master, headphones jack, a little plug for a nice Bang Olufsen subfwoofer, mic, mic boost, mic jack plug, etc.
Now with pulseaudio-alsa, I just have one volume bar for called Master, and one for Capture. No details, no left-right difference. Not my sound volume mixer. Also my shortcuts/keybindings don't work anymore, as they are linked to alsa commands, but that can be corrected, I hope.

Can I get my detailed mixers/volume bars again?

And the other part of the question...
Maybe Zoom doesn't really need PulseAudio, ne? Could I uninstall it and use pure Alsa ? ¿What is the right procedure to get rid of PulseAudio?

Thanks in advance
K

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Moyocoyani, Tloque Nahuaque.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,230

Re: pulseaudio hides all the nice bars of alsamixer

1. Because you are supposed to use pulseaudio tools to control pulseaudio state. You have all the normal volume mixer controls on pulse as well, but "logically" grouped up depending on HW state.  Install pavucontrol, there you have the volume knobs you need. It doesn't make much sense to show you a headphone volume if you do not have a headphone connected for example. On properly behaved HW pulse will switch that around relevantly. Also think about this "all those nice controls" which are the ones you are actively and often changing? Probably the master, or the headphone, depending on which is plugged in when. Pulse will automate that to manipulate the control that is currently logically active. Maybe read: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwa … MyVolumes/ as well.

Regardless your detailed mixers aren't gone, you just have to switch the device you're manipulating so that you don't muck with the ALSA->Pulse compatibility device but with your actual card, use

alsamixer -c0

2.  If you absolutely don't want to use pulse but find software forcing your hand by relying on pulseaudio, you might want to give apulse a shot.

wpkzz

Member

Registered: 2020-01-10

Posts: 47

Re: pulseaudio hides all the nice bars of alsamixer

Well, it seems that pulse-alsa is not so aware of such HW changes of state as you say. It doesn't care if I plug something on the jacks or not. It always is a Master control without separate left-right channels. With the

alsamixer -c0  

they appear, as they were.
Let my try the other suggestions.

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Moyocoyani, Tloque Nahuaque.