[Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

mystiquewolf · 2022-01-23 12:56:07

I was forwarded here from the KDE bugtracker issue.

I have this issue that the KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percentages above 100%. In addition, i will copy/paste my description from the bug:

Furthermore there are some percents which don't work, for example on 20% there is no sound, and on 25% the sound goes noticeably higher - probably somehow what's shown by Plasma as percents are not the real ones?? I'm not sure whether the percents that are not working are hard-coded, because i believe once time the 25% works and only the 20% doesn't, but other time both 20% and 25% don't work. In addition twice or thrice the change of sound level wasn't happening in reality, only Plasma printed higher or lower percents, but the sound continued to play at the same physical level. At other times (noticed this specifically at the "Audio Volume popup menu in the tray") if the sound is say at 35% and i click/lower it to say 7 percent or 15 percent or 20 percent it immediately returns to 35%.

How could i found out what's going on?

V1del · 2022-01-23 21:52:57

Percentages are in general a human representation that can have many different meanings when actually applied to HW, especially with the aggregration logic pulse/pipewire apply: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwa … MyVolumes/

What are your actual values, check post the outputs of

pactl list sinks
amixer -c0 #or whatever the actual correct index of your card from aplay -l is.

at some of these "wrong" percentages?

Last edited by V1del (2022-01-23 21:53:39)

mystiquewolf · 2022-01-24 11:45:28

I’ll post only the differences between the outputs.

So for 35 (doesn’t work; no sound output) vs 45 (working) percent we have:

pactl

Volume: front-left: 22937 /  35% / -27,36 dB,   front-right: 22937 /  35% / -27,36 dB

vs

Volume: front-left: 29491 /  45% / -20,81 dB,   front-right: 29491 /  45% / -20,81 dB

For the line

Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY

there is one trailing space after it (on the same line) in the output of 45 percent

amixer -c0

Simple mixer control ‘Master’,0
Mono: Playback 51 [59%] [-27.00dB] [on]

vs

Simple mixer control ‘Master’,0
Mono: Playback 60 [69%] [-20.25dB] [on]

And

Simple mixer control ‘PCM’,0
Front Left: Playback 254 [100%] [-0.20dB]
  Front Right: Playback 254 [100%] [-0.20dB]

vs

Simple mixer control ‘PCM’,0
Front Left: Playback 253 [99%] [-0.40dB]
  Front Right: Playback 253 [99%] [-0.40dB]

And for 110 percent:

pactl

Volume: front-left: 72090 / 110% / 2,48 dB,   front-right: 72090 / 110% / 2,48 dB

For the line

Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY

there is no space (45 percent has this space) after the line

amixer -c0

Simple mixer control ‘Master’,0
Mono: Playback 87 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]

And

Simple mixer control ‘PCM’,0
Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
  Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]

So for 100 percent specifically i’ve found out that the KDE popup that appears in the middle of the screen to show the new sound volume after change with the keyboard doesn’t show more than 100%.
However if i open the Audio Volume popup from the speaker icon in the tray, there inside it i can see that the volume actually goes to 105 percent, sometimes even to 110% and on the next button press to increase even more goes back to 100%.

V1del · 2022-01-24 12:46:25

Looks harmless, Just to make sure you don't have some frankenstein setup that uses normal pulse right? Make sure pipewire-pulse is installed instead of pulseaudio, do you run some other client that might want to control and manipulate the volume? Which programs are you usually testing this with? e.g. in discord you want to make sure that "automatic volume handling" is disabled. What's your output for

sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*

during a testing scenario?

mystiquewolf · 2022-01-24 15:31:49

pacman -Qs pulse

local/libcanberra 0.30+2+gc0620e4-5
    A small and lightweight implementation of the XDG Sound Theme Specification
local/libpulse 15.0-1
    A featureful, general-purpose sound server (client library)
local/pipewire-alsa 1:0.3.43-5
    Low-latency audio/video router and processor - ALSA configuration
local/pipewire-pulse 1:0.3.43-5
    Low-latency audio/video router and processor - PulseAudio replacement
local/plasma-pa 5.23.5-1 (plasma)
    Plasma applet for audio volume management using PulseAudio
local/pulseaudio-qt 1.3-1
    Qt bindings for libpulse

And

                     USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0:  lyubotest  62820 F.... pipewire
                     lyubotest  62821 F.... wireplumber
/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p:   lyubotest  62820 F...m pipewire
/dev/snd/seq:        lyubotest  62820 F.... pipewire

Last edited by mystiquewolf (2022-01-24 15:33:20)

mystiquewolf · 2022-01-24 15:34:28

Just Firefox

mystiquewolf · 2022-02-15 11:41:27

FWIW i've filed https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire … ssues/2135

Last edited by mystiquewolf (2022-02-15 11:42:05)

Arch Linux

#1 2022-01-23 12:56:07

[Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

#2 2022-01-23 21:52:57

Re: [Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

#3 2022-01-24 11:45:28

Re: [Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

#4 2022-01-24 12:46:25

Re: [Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

#5 2022-01-24 15:31:49

Re: [Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

#6 2022-01-24 15:34:28

Re: [Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

#7 2022-02-15 11:41:27

Re: [Pipewire] KDE sound volume popup doesn't display percents above 100%

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