Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Stop PulseAudio From Changing Sound Settings?

Posted by timothy on from the sound-on-linux-still-frustrating dept.

New submitter cgdae writes Does anyone know how to stop PulseAudio/Pavucontrol from changing sound settings whenever there is a hardware change such as headphones being plugged in/out or docking/undocking my laptop ? I recently had to install PulseAudio on my Debian system because the Linux version of Skype started to require it. Ever since, whenever i dock/undock or use/stop using headphones, all sound disappears, and i have to go to Pavucontrol and make random changes to its 'Output Devices' or 'Speakers' or 'Headphones' tab, or mute/unmute things, or drag a volume slider which has inexplicably moved to nearly zero, until sound magically comes back again. I've tried creating empty PulseAudio config files in my home directory, and/or disabling the loading of various PulseAudio modules in /etc/pulse/*.conf, but i cannot stop PulseAudio from messing things up whenever there's a hardware change. It's really frustrating that something like PulseAudio doesn't have an easy-to-find way of preventing it from trying (and failing) to be clever.

[In case it's relevant, my system is a Lenovo X220 laptop, with Debian jessie, kernel 3.14-2-amd64. I run fvwm with an ancient config.]

12 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. are the debian support forums down? by Selur · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds more like a question for a support forum than for slashdot,...

    1. Re:are the debian support forums down? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sounds more like a question for a support forum than for slashdot,...

      It's part of a paid smear campaign, intended to establish a belief that Linux is difficult and unreliable. Have you noticed how every discussion about Linux/Foss on Slashdot is centered on these weird corner-cases that almost nobody in the real world ever sees?

      That's because a certain mainstream OS vendor has a lab full of people trying to find flaws and publish them. DiceDot, of course, happily oblige$...

    2. Re:are the debian support forums down? by Aighearach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, or are just trolling. I'm going to say this whole post is a giant troll that dice fell for. They thought they were trolling linux, but they were really trolling systemd. Whoops!

    3. Re:are the debian support forums down? by kaladorn · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Gaming in Linux still doesn't match up to what can be done on Windows.

      And I have yet to find a spreadsheet of any sort that is as capable as Excel 2007. (2010 may be, but the online variant now isn't). I have tried most open source alternatives. I'd probably even try a pay-for alternative if I thought there was one for Linux that was as capable.

      The free market sees why windows exists.

      --
      -- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
    4. Re: are the debian support forums down? by dshadowwolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And why, if its not doing what it was created to do, then, would I keep it around at all? This type of "you can do what you want, but it needs to be this way" crap is why I've stepped out of most online and open-source communities. I can see the "this is how it's done" type of thing for electronics - most of the time there is only one way to do something in electronics...

      You know what, fuck it - I'm spending too much time discussing this and not enough time working on the API wrapper-layer I need to create for some paying work. I'll check back Sunday or Monday.

  2. Editor Troll by twistedcubic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is an obvious troll, but not from the OP. This is a troll by the editor, Timothy, to encourage discussion of the PulseAudio author, Lennart Poettering, and systemd.

    1. Re:Editor Troll by dshadowwolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It very well could be, but why not ignore the trolling or turn it on it's head by actually answering the question and not getting into deep discussions or flame wars about the creator of the software in question?

      (Note: as I've said in another comment, I have a philosophical difference of opinion with Mr. Poettering, but I refuse to attempt a smear campaign - even though I might have contributed to one in the past, I've come to the conclusion that it's not worth my time)

    2. Re:Editor Troll by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yup. If posted on a typical distro support forum this would get a clear answer in about 3 posts.

      Instead we'll get 300 "helpful" posts on slashdot where the closest to being helpful comes out to "stop using skype and pulseaudio" but most will be off-topic banter about Lennart and systemd...

      Slashdot must be dying and this stuff has to be some kind of deliberate effort to attract eyeballs by making slashdot the premiere place for flamewars. Half the summaries and headlines are completely misleading as well, generally designed to maximize sensation and banter.

      News articles should give everything away in the first three lines, and should give half of everything away in the headline. They shouldn't be teasers. You shouldn't have to read the original article to figure out what the summary got wrong. If I'm in a hurry I want the condensed version of the news, not misinformation substituted for news.

      I don't know why I even bother here any more. The changes to the discussion system were annoying enough. It seems like the content has gone downhill as well.

    3. Re:Editor Troll by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is it really smearing when you look at how someone's last major project went when judging how well their current project is likely to work?

    4. Re:Editor Troll by Aighearach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except he probably just needs to turn off "automatically adjust mixer levels" in Skype, and stop blaming PulseAudio. The hate leads to the blame, in this case. If he didn't know what to hate, (for reasons that are logic errors) then he'd have to ask instead, "what software is connected to my sound subsystem and adjusts the mixer levels automatically?" That would be a question that might lead to the answer. But starting from logic errors and hate, they seek out PulseAudio to blame it. And are wrong, mean, and dumb asses, all at the same time.

      Also some audio players fiddle the mixer, when allowed. They think they're helping. I personally went back to an old unforked xmms. Still compiles!

    5. Re:Editor Troll by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He was a co-developer on Avahi and was implementing an already defined API. For the most part though, Avahi just handles the hostname resolution which is a small project. It may (or may not) be capable of more but I have never seen anything more used in practice.

      Systemd more closely resembles pulseaudio in scope. I doubt there would be many complaints about pulseaudio if it was only used for the system beep.

      System init is much too important to risk on that track record without some really good evidence of a strong design. The hairball dependency tree suggests this is heading in the pulseaudio direction, not the avahi direction.

  3. Re:Pulseaudio is a synthom, It's not to blame. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This FUD needs to stop. PulseAudio is not for low latency audio and never was. Further, low-latency in usespace audio has been brilliantly worked out for nearly a decade now with the Jack daemon (JACKd). http://jackaudio.org/ That this has been "kicked to userspace" by the kernel devs is a non-statement: it *does* belong in userspace and intelligently engineered systems, with low-latency in mind, work beautifully from userspace.

    Please do not attack the kernel.