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#1 2012-06-19 13:36:19
- macaco
- Member
- From: Graz, Austria
- Registered: 2009-03-22
- Posts: 108
[Solved] Sound: Applications override global volume level; poor output
I have installed Arch 2 days ago and still could not manage the solve the following sound problem:
Problem: Applications such as Banshee or Totem always start with a local sound level at zero. When I adjust their local volumes this affects the global sound volume, and vice versa. Also the sound output is very poor in both the PC speakers and the analog output. Especially all bass frequencies seem to be missing resulting in a "metallic" sound (so my subwoover is activated in vain).
As I thought that this problem was linked to pulseaudio I looked up "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pu … is_started" but did not find it applicable to my system as I there are no such files as /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
As there has been no problem on other distributions on my machine (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora) this problem should be solvable.
I would be glad for any help. Please let me know if there is any information needed.
Thanks
g.
Last edited by macaco (2012-06-20 03:19:09)
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#2 2012-06-19 13:53:43
- Trilby
- Inspector Parrot
- Registered: 2011-11-29
- Posts: 30,513
- Website
Re: [Solved] Sound: Applications override global volume level; poor output
First, I'd say determine whether you are actually using pulse audio or just alsa. I prefer the latter, but that may very well be just to familiarity, from my admittedly very limited perspective there seem to be no end of sound problems with people using pulse audio, yet I'm not sure what it adds for most systems that alsa doesn't already do.
So the output of `pacman -Qs pulse` will answer that question (libpulse different than the pulseaudio package).
Second, do you use a WM/DE? Which one? Some of the larger DEs do things with the sound that I don't really understand.
Third, if you are not using pulse, and you do not use KDE or Gnome, I suspect the ALSA page on the wiki could be useful. Have you read through that yet?
"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman
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#3 2012-06-19 14:14:56
- macaco
- Member
- From: Graz, Austria
- Registered: 2009-03-22
- Posts: 108
Re: [Solved] Sound: Applications override global volume level; poor output
Well, I found pulse to be quite useful on other distributions although I also do remember that it has been always an issue within Arch (this is my first Arch installation since ages). Maybe this time I can get it right....
Informations:
1) I am currently using the latest Gnome i.e. 3.4.
2) Query output:
yaourt -Qs pulse
extra/libao 1.1.0-2
Cross-platform audio output library and plugins
extra/libcanberra-pulse 0.28-5
PulseAudio plugin for libcanberra
extra/libpulse 2.0-2
A featureful, general-purpose sound server (client library)
extra/paprefs 0.9.10-2
A simple GTK-based configuration dialog for PulseAudio
extra/pavucontrol 1.0-1
A GTK volume control tool for PulseAudio
extra/pulseaudio 2.0-2
A featureful, general-purpose sound server
extra/pulseaudio-alsa 2-1
ALSA Configuration for PulseAudioOffline
#4 2012-06-19 17:18:55
- magellan
- Member
- From: Near Frankfurt, Germany
- Registered: 2012-06-19
- Posts: 2
Re: [Solved] Sound: Applications override global volume level; poor output
Hi,
had the same weird sound behaviour with the master volume changing the individual sound levels of applications and vice versa, it was driving me crazy. The reason was indeed the "flat-volumes = yes" setting in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf. After changing it to no everything was fine again. Strange thing is you don't have this file. It belongs to the pulseaudio package:
[chris@magellan:~]$ pacman -Qo /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
/etc/pulse/daemon.conf ist in pulseaudio 2.0-2 enthaltenHave you tried reinstalling the pulseaudio package to get that file back?
Cheers,
Chris
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#5 2012-06-19 21:46:23
- macaco
- Member
- From: Graz, Austria
- Registered: 2009-03-22
- Posts: 108
Re: [Solved] Sound: Applications override global volume level; poor output
Well... maybe I was stupid in letting myself get mislead by portuguese "demon" insteat of "daemon". I finally found the file, which of course has already been installed. Nevertheless... even whe I changed "flat-volumes = yes" to "no" and restarted the system I did not notice any change.
Here is the actual /usr/pulse/daemon.conf
; daemonize = no
; fail = yes
; allow-module-loading = yes
; allow-exit = yes
; use-pid-file = yes
; system-instance = no
; local-server-type = user
; enable-shm = yes
; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB
; lock-memory = no
; cpu-limit = no
; high-priority = yes
; nice-level = -11
; realtime-scheduling = yes
; realtime-priority = 5
; exit-idle-time = 20
; scache-idle-time = 20
; dl-search-path = (depends on architecture)
; load-default-script-file = yes
; default-script-file = /etc/pulse/default.pa
; log-target = auto
; log-level = notice
; log-meta = no
; log-time = no
; log-backtrace = 0
resample-method=speex-float-0
; resample-method = speex-float-3
; enable-remixing = yes
; enable-lfe-remixing = no
; flat-volumes = no
; rlimit-fsize = -1
; rlimit-data = -1
; rlimit-stack = -1
; rlimit-core = -1
; rlimit-as = -1
; rlimit-rss = -1
; rlimit-nproc = -1
; rlimit-nofile = 256
; rlimit-memlock = -1
; rlimit-locks = -1
; rlimit-sigpending = -1
; rlimit-msgqueue = -1
; rlimit-nice = 31
; rlimit-rtprio = 9
; rlimit-rttime = 1000000
; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100
; alternate-sample-rate = 48000
; default-sample-channels = 2
; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right
; default-fragments = 4
; default-fragment-size-msec = 25
; enable-deferred-volume = yes
; deferred-volume-safety-margin-usec = 8000
; deferred-volume-extra-delay-usec = 0 Offline
#6 2012-06-19 22:24:17
- ZekeSulastin
- Member
- Registered: 2010-09-20
- Posts: 266
Re: [Solved] Sound: Applications override global volume level; poor output
even when I changed "flat-volumes = yes" to "no" and restarted the system I did not notice any change.
The line's still commented out as far as the daemon is concerned; remove the ; from the line:
resample-method=speex-float-0
; resample-method = speex-float-3
; enable-remixing = yes
; enable-lfe-remixing = no
flat-volumes = no Offline
#7 2012-06-20 03:17:01
- macaco
- Member
- From: Graz, Austria
- Registered: 2009-03-22
- Posts: 108
Re: [Solved] Sound: Applications override global volume level; poor output
This did the trick! I did not know, that ";" is used to comment out something too. So far it has always been "#".
Well, let's mark this as solved 
Thanks a lot!
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