Karmic - sound level gets lowered when opening new sound files

I can confirm this behavior on my system with a Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02). Volume decreases with every new audio/video file using totem or audacious.

I attached a video demonstrating this.

pulseaudio 1:0.9.16~test5-0ubuntu1 solved the problem when using totem.

But I still experience this behavior with audacious2 (pulseaudio output plugin). When skipping through tracks in audacious, per application volume level (gnome-volume-control) decreases while 'Output volume' setting does not change.

Does disabling flatvol alleviate the symptom?

echo flat-volumes = no|tee -a ~/.pulse/daemon.conf && killall pulseaudio

On Aug 21, 2009 5:00 AM, "morryis" <email address hidden> wrote:

pulseaudio 1:0.9.16~test5-0ubuntu1 solved the problem when using totem.

But I still experience this behavior with audacious2 (pulseaudio output
plugin). When skipping through tracks in audacious, per application
volume level (gnome-volume-control) decreases while 'Output volume'
setting does not change.

-- Karmic - sound level gets lowered when opening new sound files
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/...

yes, disabling flat volume helps.

Same Problem for me here, disabling flat volumes helped here, too.

On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 6:23 AM, Thorsten Reinbold
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Same Problem for me here, disabling flat volumes helped here, too.

Karmic already ships flatvol disabled.

On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 9:20 AM, I <email address hidden> wrote:
> Karmic already ships flatvol disabled.

Sorry, I was a bit quick on the gun here. We're still debating whether
to disable flatvol.

yup, reproduced with rhythmbox too, and disabling flatvol fixes it

This bug was fixed in the package pulseaudio - 1:0.9.18-0ubuntu1

---------------
pulseaudio (1:0.9.18-0ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  [ Daniel T Chen ]
  * New upstream bugfix release
  * debian/patches/:
    - 0052-backport-56b6e18030.patch: Drop
    - 0053-fix-output-element.patch: Drop, applied upstream
    - 0090-use-volume-ignore-for-analog-output.patch: Stop applying
      this patch. Too many people are confused as to why PCM isn't
      being changed when they adjust PA's volume.
    + 0060-backport-c194d.patch: Backport fixes from 0.9.18-stable
      branch (to changeset c194db71b0ff853b4f46df26e135edf63b215451)
    + 0090-disable-flat-volumes.patch: Many people seem uncomfortable
      with PA's new default volume adjustment routine, so disable it
      in favour of the existing behaviour known in previous Ubuntu
      releases. The downside is that the user again has many knobs to
      fiddle; the upside is that applications can no longer drop the
      volume floor. This addresses LP: #403859, #433209.

  [ Luke Yelavich ]
  * debian/pulse-alsa.conf: Expose the pulse device to the ALSA name hint API.
    Thanks to David Henningsson <email address hidden> for the patch.
  * Add epoch to shlibs version definitions.

 -- Luke Yelavich <email address hidden> Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:28:25 +1000

Too bad flatvol was disabled, because there was a last minute fix in Totem[1] that makes disabling it unnecessary.

[1] http://git.gnome.org/cgit/totem/commit/?id=a365d50c19b900911d7fe1bfdb24d22f8ab5bc98

I'm aware of the totem fix, but the general behaviour is one that plagues
users with many apps.

Also, reenabling it is fairly straightforward.

On Sep 21, 2009 1:15 PM, "Tobias Wolf"
<<email address hidden><towolf%<email address hidden>>>
wrote:

Too bad flatvol was disabled, because there was a last minute fix in
Totem[1] that makes disabling it unnecessary.

[1]
http://git.gnome.org/cgit/totem/commit/?id=a365d50c19b900911d7fe1bfdb24d22f8ab5bc98

-- Karmic - sound level gets lowered when opening new sound files
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/...

I'm also a bit disappointed by flat volumes being disabled. It seems like one of those features which was an actual progress but takes a (little!) bit of effort to get used to. I think it's one of those cases where a verbal minority was louder than a majority of happy users... :-(

Hmm, I get the 100% -> 0% problem with the latest pulseaudio 1:0.9.19-0ubuntu1 and spotify running through wine 1.1.31 at the start of each new track. I'm using a creative audigy2.

My /etc/pulse/daemon.conf already has "flat-volumes = no" set (Karmic).

Hi, for me it's similar as for StuJordan (which results in unusable audio so I finally registered to Launchpad:):

The volume level in Rhytmbox get automaticaly from 100% to 0% while playing the mp3s.
I have updated to latest pulseaudio 1:0.9.19-0ubuntu1 and my /etc/pulse/daemon.conf already has "flat-volumes = no" set (Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit - upgraded from 9.04... on Jaunty before recent upgrade audio was ok at least for mp3s).

My HW: HP Compaq nx9420 notebook - HDA Intel AD1981HD Audio codec

One more think I discovered:

When I open mp3 in Rhytmbox by double clicking on file in Nautilus than it seems to work OK = no auto decreasing in volume level, but if I start Rhytmbox from desktop (.desktop file launcher) or by shortcut key and than start playing mp3s from playlist volume level get automaticaly decreased from 100% to 0%.

I must correct my previous post, since it seems to depend on mp3 file being played and not on how the Rhytmbox was started.

So far I wasn't able to discover a pattern so all I know is that for some mp3s problem is corrected, but for other the bug still remains the same (auto decrease volume level from 100% to 0% while playing). So I think the bug is not fixed completely.

To debug whether this issue is related to GStreamer, please try a
non-GSt app, like mplayer. Does the volume automatically become
lowered when playing the mp3 through mplayer?

I tried mplayer and it seems to play correctly even the mp3 files, which are buggy in Rhytmbox. I also tried to test playing the problematic mp3 files in Totem and there wasn't also any problem. Btw in Sound Preferences it shows me that mplayer is using ALSA plugin does this mean that it bypases pulseaudio?

No, it routes through alsa-lib's pulse plugin to PulseAudio.

I tested it also in vlc and all seems to work ok, so I think the problem may be just Rhytmbox specific.

Also because vlc seems to handle some movies better than Totem (which for some movies have a problem with sound, making pulseaudio consuming CPU performance and than hang), I'm considering to switch back to vlc, to have just one player for all. As I searched there is a lot of bugs reported for pulseaudio, but on my system it seems that mostly only Rhytmbox and Totem has problems with pulseaudio, which is strange - since those are default apps for Ubuntu and should work better than alternatives... but I guess it would be to easy and perfect world to live in:).

Anyway if you want me to test something more let me know. I plan to have Rhytmbox+Totem in my system for some time before I completely replace it with vlc.

Having problem on 10.04/Lucid with PCM (in alsamixer) going from X to 0 % when Spotify stops playback (pause) - another bug report?

The workaround for my specific situation was to start wine with 'padsp wine "C:\Program Files\Spotify\spotify.exe"'.