I've been wrestling with this for over a week. The kmix event sounds slider is very nearly at the lowest position. When I raise it so as to be able to hear notifications (e.g. new email), it often immediately just pops back to that same low level. Sometimes, it stays put until I adust another control, then as soon as the other control is moved, it pops back to the very low level. I can't find a way to get it to stay at a useable level.

If I login as root, "event sounds" is not even one of the sliders. It's as if I get a whole different mixer, with more sliders, and they have names that seem to correspond to hardware audio channels.

I have tried going into ~./kde/share/config/ and renaming both of the kmix config files there: kmixctrlc and kmixrc. Then I logout and log back in. The files weren't recreated as I had expected. And the problem was still there. So I renamed them back.

What's the deal? I need to be able to hear a few of the event notifications. Anyone know what's going on?

Thanks in advance!

Please try removing ~/.pulse (or ~/.config/pulse on newer systems) outside of KDE and without any "pulseaudio" processes running to see if this helps.

i reported this behavior here, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327992
unfortunately, no movement so far...

The ill-behavior has returned. Interestingly, the positions of the sliders (their order) has reverted back to what it was as well. When it worked, the "Event sounds" was 3/4. Now and before that, it's 4/4 (4th of four sliders).

BTW: What's the easiest way to get out of KDE to adjust the pulseaudio files?

Thanks again!

The easiest way is to logout, then switch to a virtual terminal (Ctrl + Alt + F1) and login on the terminal. You can use Ctrl + Alt + F7 to return to the graphical login screen.

I'll try it again. to see if it'll stay fixed.

Looks like I have to un-encrypt the directory (turn off encryption) to get in there. I will work on that in a little while.

Okay. Please let us know if it fixes (or does not fix) the issue.

I "fixed" it- it seems. I decided to try changing the settings as I logged out. It was a race. After a few tries, I did it, and it has worked normally through about half a dozen reboots. That is, I can change the volume to whatever I want, and it stays there, even through logging out/in and reboots.

I'm embarrassed to post this as a solution, as I know how ridiculous it sounds. But it seemed like creating a race condition might work, and I don't know enough about KDE or Linux to do much else. So I tried this.

But it's definitely a bug, and if nothing else, my solution proves that.

Right after I posted this, I decided to look at it. It had gone down to the same low level (nearly zero) as before, even though it was fine every time I checked through the day. I re-adjusted it to my liking and it stayed put. But something changed it at some point in the last few hours.

Another update 2014-05-22: When I booted up today, it was where I left it, and has remained there since. Still baffled as to what changes it intermittently, even if now infrequently.

One thing you could try doing to attempt to eliminate KMix as the cause of this: use "pavucontrol" to change the volume instead, ensuring KMix is closed.
If you can still reproduce it, then it could be a proprietary application as the Google Hangouts plugin (known to interfere in volume controls) for instance mucking with the volume levels.