I have been running Pulse Audio trouble-free on Ubuntu hardy 64 bit for about a year. I use PA exclusively for MPD and all things music.

I recently installed KDE 4.1 on the same machine only to get familiar enough to begin supporting my client application GMPC, which will serve as a fancy jukebox.

When I start a session using GNOME, all is well. But when I switch to KDE, the volume control goes south. I lose the keyboard mute/up/down functionality entirely. Furthermore, when I depress any one of the three buttons, nothing displays and nothing happens.

PA does not connect, and I have to double-click the volume icon in the system tray to get limited functionality of KMIX....the mute only works when I open the mixer.

When I go back to using a GNOME session, all is well.

Normally this would be no big deal, but at the time this is what I have to work with and I'd really like to begin learning KDE.

Any and all input is greatly appreciated.

A little more time devoted to this issue has revealed an important consideration that may prove helpful.

When I boot up Ubuntu and then switch to KDE session, life is grand. I have PA and volume control working correctly. However, the keyboard mute/up/down volume functions do not exist.

Still looking for input here. Thanks in advance.

Found the solution to all my issues with KDE and PA with the exception of keyboard audio controls.

Boot into KDE and either start PA with terminal window, or configure KDE to autostart. Simple as that...go figure!

Note that in most cases, due to conflicts between Pulseaudio and Phonon ( the KDE 4 Multimedia framework ) it is not recommended to use Pulseaudio under KDE, hence why your distribution has ( probably ) disabled it.

To configure Multimedia shortcuts, open KMix > Settings > Configure Shortcuts.