I recently installed Sabayon after running Kubuntu for many years, and I have a bit of a problem. In Kubuntu 15.10, it kept the Built-in Audio Analog Stereo volume at 40%. Which was fine. So when I switched to Sabayon, I set that volume control to 40%, as well. At first, Knotify events would cause the volume to jump to 100%. I figured out how to fix that by turning off the High Definition Audio Controller volume (that never affected my actual volume, anyway).

However, VLC and Amarok directly affect the Built-in Audio Analog Stereo volume. I even removed phonon-vlc and installed phonon-gstreamer, and it still happens just the same. If I increase the volume in VLC or Amarok, the Plasma audio increases. If I decrease the volume, however, the system volume doesn't go down.

This didn't seem to happen in Kubuntu 15.10. I don't know if it's because I started fresh with Sabayon (fresh /home partition, meaning no old config files), or if it's a Sabayon issue.

Zeikcied wrote:However, VLC and Amarok directly affect the Built-in Audio Analog Stereo volume. I even removed phonon-vlc and installed phonon-gstreamer, and it still happens just the same. If I increase the volume in VLC or Amarok, the Plasma audio increases. If I decrease the volume, however, the system volume doesn't go down.

That's PulseAudio's "infamous" flat volume feature.
To disable it, set "flat-volumes = no" in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf.

Then applications should not influence the master volume any more.

Nothing to do with KDE though.

This didn't seem to happen in Kubuntu 15.10. I don't know if it's because I started fresh with Sabayon (fresh /home partition, meaning no old config files), or if it's a Sabayon issue.

Kubuntu sets "flat-volumes = no" by default AFAIK.
The upstream (PulseAudio) default is "yes" though.

Thank you.

This problem was driving me crazy.

Hi, I have a perhaps related problem, although maybe inverted...
when I'm playing music in banshee, if I reduce volume using the system volume (keyboard shortcuts/ kmix), it goes down in banshee...but doesn't go back up again. so if i mute system sound then unmute it, banshee stays muted and i have to use the specific setting within banshee...

any idea if there's a fix for this? one that makes the behaviour symettrical, whatever it does?

But I've posted about it herehttps://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=130610 anyway since it's a slightly different issue.