66% sound volume

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#1

I was surprised that my headphones became unexpectedly loud after my updates for openSUSE 13.1/Tumbleweed. I have experimented a bit in my KDE 4.11.3 session which uses the primary backend “Phonon GStreamer 4.7.0-2.4.1” at the moment.

Now I see and hear that when some applications try to notify me about something like the usual inquiry for storing an edited document the corresponding event sound is mostly changed to a specific volume. I can decrease the volume. But it will be reset to 66% in this case.
A higher volume is kept if I increase the affected system setting above this level. How should I reduce this 66% thing?

#2

PulseAudio allows to set the volume to a maximum of 153%.
In the latest KDE, KMix has an experimental feature to allow this, which is turned on by default in openSUSE 13.1. But it shows PA’s 153% as 100%, which explains your 66%.

See here for how to turn that off:
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/hardware/492000-incorrect-volume-range-audio-devices.html#post2597691

As to why your volume doesn’t stick, I have no idea, since I don’t use PulseAudio at all.
You could try to turn PA off in YaST->Hardware->Sound, click on “Other” and select “PulseAudio Configuration”.

#3

Thanks for your answer.

The KMix display returns by the setting “VolumeOverdrive=false” to a value range I was used to before.

As to why your volume doesn’t stick, I have no idea, since I don’t use PulseAudio at all.

I am curious when my choice will become persistent again for a lower value of the event sound volume in this audio interface.

You could try to turn PA off in YaST->Hardware->Sound, click on “Other” and select “PulseAudio Configuration”.

The sound volume is kept as expected after I switched the PulseAudio support off. I hope that I can reactivate it in the near future.

#4

Well, there was/is a bug regarding this in Phonon (it automatically raised the notification volume to 100% when a notification was played).
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324975

But I thought that was fixed already in openSUSE’s packages?

* Tue Sep 24 2013 hrvoje.senjan@gmail.com
- Drop 0001-Revert-cache-volume-inside-PAStreams-when-trying-to-.patch
  better solution is done in kdebase4-runtime package


* Tue Sep 17 2013 hrvoje.senjan@gmail.com
- Added 0001-Revert-cache-volume-inside-PAStreams-when-trying-to-.patch,
  which resolves a regression in volume getting restored after each
  knotify event (kde#324975)

and kdebase4-runtime:

* Tue Sep 24 2013 hrvoje.senjan@gmail.com
- Added Remove-volume-control-from-KNotify.patch -- Basically is
  KNotify's volume controlling ineffective, however with phonon 4.7
  it triggeres a bad side-effect, thus we remove the option completely
  kde#324975

Do the other volumes stick?
Does it work if you use pavucontrol to set the notification volume?

Maybe you should file a bug report, but the question is if it is PulseAudio’s, KMix’s, or Phonon’s fault.