Arch Linux

genericaf

Member

Registered: 2016-03-25

Posts: 17

Sometimes endless audio increase/decrease with bound XF86Audio keys

I have bound FN+F8 and FN+F9 to increase/decrease volume and it works fine most of the time.

# Increase volume
sh -c "pactl set-sink-mute 0 false ; pactl set-sink-volume 0 +5%"
  XF86AudioRaiseVolume

# Decrease volume
sh -c "pactl set-sink-mute 0 false ; pactl set-sink-volume 0 -5%"
  XF86AudioLowerVolume

But occasionally when I hit these keys a couple of times to turn up/down the volume the increase/decrease keeps going until the the headphone speakers either scream in overdrive (truly ear-damaging) or are silent. Also, when this happens, keystrokes are ignored (as if the keyboard was dead) and only plugging out my headphones makes the keyboard work again. When I then plug my headphones back in and execute `alsamixer` it shows me that the master channel has some volume level in the hundreds or thousands if the situation was (initiated by a volume increase). Normally, it stops at 100. Upon trying to change the volume with the arrow keys there, it instantly jumps back to 100.

This also happens with other headphones and the laptop speakers and it has been happening for a year at least. I use no desktop environment, just i3. What might be causing this issue?

Laptop model: Fujitsu Lifebook AH544
Kernel: 5.5.6-arch1-1

Possibly relevant packages:
pulseaudio 13.0-3
pulseaudio-alsa 2-5
alsa-utils 1.2.2-1
alsa-plugins 1.2.2-1
alsa-lib 1.2.2-1