I’m using openSUSE 13.2 with KDE. My computer has a built-in sound card, but when I connect it to an HDMI monitor I often use its rather good speakers rather than the built-in ones. Unfortunately, the multimedia keys and volume icon in the tray only control the volume of one device at a time.
What I want to do is have the hotkeys and volume icon control the volume of all the devices on the computer at the same time. After all, if the phone rings or some video starts blaring, you don’t care what device it’s coming from, you just want to mute or change the volume!
However, I can’t figure out how to do that. The volume icon menu has an option called “Select master channel”, but that’s a misnomer – what it does is choose a primary channel, not the master channel.
How can I use one control to adjust the volume of all devices at once?
Cant say with short cuts but have you tried installing pavulcontrol ??? It give much finer control over all the possible audio sources, devices and sinks
It is really the recommended way to deal with things. Some features have been put into kmix but it really is not the best interface.
I also use a widget called veromix because it is a bit more convenient to get to fast because it lives on the system tray but pavulcontrol still has the best over all interface for fine tuning and trouble shooting. BTW you don’t have to remove kmix but can if you want to
I’ve installed pavucontrol. It actually has a GUI now… I have memories of red and green ASCII blocks on a black terminal background! Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a master audio channel. I also have Veromix installed, but… no master volume, either.
I’d have thought this would be a standard feature of all audio controls! In the same way that it doesn’t matter if you’re watching Netflix, cable, a DVD or a VCR – you can always mute the audio or change the volume with your TV’s remote control.
$ amixer -c1 Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
Playback channels: Mono
Limits: Playback 0 - 87
Mono: Playback 67 [77%] -15.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 87
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] -65.25dB] [off]
Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] -65.25dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Speaker',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 87
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 87 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 87 [100%] [0.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
Capabilities: pvolume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 255
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [off]
Front Right: Playback 0 [0%] -34.50dB] [off]
Simple mixer control 'Mic Boost',0
Capabilities: volume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: 0 - 3
Front Left: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]
Front Right: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 63
Front Left: Capture 63 [100%] [30.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Capture 63 [100%] [30.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Auto-Mute Mode',0
Capabilities: enum
Items: 'Disabled' 'Enabled'
Item0: 'Enabled'
Simple mixer control 'Internal Mic Boost',0
Capabilities: volume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: 0 - 3
Front Left: 1 [33%] [12.00dB]
Front Right: 1 [33%] [12.00dB]
$
That is okay, but I was more thinking about the sound card configuration listed under the ‘Audio Hardware Setup’? Is that set as you require? You’ve already hinted at two cards with your ‘amixer’ output.
Just to help others advise further, it might be useful to share a more complete picture of your audio system and driver configuration using the following script
sudo /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
It will upload the output to a remote server and provide a link to it that you can post here.