I have a problem with pavucontrol on a 5.1 surround system. If I change the volume of each channel individually, it behaves as it should. However, if I lock the channels together and then I change the volume, this only affects the centre speaker and the subwoofer (as well as the "master" stream), as I can verify by observing the sliders in alsamixer, as well as by listening to the sound. Notably, if I enable verbose log and try adjusting the volumes of the channels, I cannot detect anything wrong in the log file. Specifically, if the channels are locked, it appears that the volumes of all the channels do indeed change together. For example, I can read lines such as ( 6.818| 0.000) D: [pulseaudio] sink.c: The reference volume of sink alsa_output.pci-0000_02_00.0.analog-surround-51 changed from front-left: 27227 / 42% / -22.89 dB, front-right: 27227 / 42% / -22.89 dB, rear-left: 27227 / 42% / -22.89 dB, rear-right: 27227 / 42% / -22.89 dB, front-center: 27227 / 42% / -22.89 dB, lfe: 27227 / 42% / -22.89 dB to front-left: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, front-right: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, rear-left: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, rear-right: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, front-center: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, lfe: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB. ( 6.818| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ctxfi] alsa-sink.c: Requested volume: front-left: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, front-right: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, rear-left: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, rear-right: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, front-center: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB, lfe: 24323 / 37% / -25.83 dB ( 6.818| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ctxfi] alsa-sink.c: Got hardware volume: front-left: 24396 / 37% / -25.75 dB, front-right: 24396 / 37% / -25.75 dB, rear-left: 24396 / 37% / -25.75 dB, rear-right: 24396 / 37% / -25.75 dB, front-center: 24396 / 37% / -25.75 dB, lfe: 24396 / 37% / -25.75 dB ( 6.818| 0.000) D: [alsa-sink-ctxfi] alsa-sink.c: Calculated software volume: front-left: 65340 / 100% / -0.08 dB, front-right: 65340 / 100% / -0.08 dB, rear-left: 65340 / 100% / -0.08 dB, rear-right: 65340 / 100% / -0.08 dB, front-center: 65340 / 100% / -0.08 dB, lfe: 65340 / 100% / -0.08 dB (accurate-enough=yes) Similarly, when I move just one channel, only the volume of the requested channel seems to increase or decrease, as expected. However, if I open alsamixer and observe the sliders, adjusting the volume with locked channels cause only the Master and Center/LFE sliders to move. Needless to say, I tested the speakers with speaker-test -t wav -c 6 and they work fine. Another possibly interesting detail is that, when adjusting the volume with the channels locked, the sliders for the default "pulseaudio" card within alsamixer all move together, whereas the sliders for the actual card (Creative X-Fi), which I can see by selecting it with F6, do not (as written above, only "Master" and "Center/LFE" move). Output of pa-info is attached. Reproducible: Always
Created attachment 761304 [details] Output from pa-info
Thank you for your comprehensive report. To me it sounds like a bug in the software provided upstream or a misconfiguration in your system [3]. Does the same source work for you on another distribution? If it works on other distributions, but not on Gentoo Linux, I suggest to discuss this problem on a related mailing list, forum or IRC channel. I have had very good experience on the Gentoo IRC [1], of course there are also forums and mailing lists. [2] In the mean time you can recompile and add the logs as described on https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Attach_the_logs_to_the_bug_ticket Perhaps we can see something odd. Next time, please add the link to the upstream ticket. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issues/1315 [1] https://www.gentoo.org/get-involved/irc-channels/ [2] https://www.gentoo.org/support/ [3] look up the upstream forums; search in their bug tracker
This was discussed in multimedia forum https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1146463.html