Bug 65568

Summary:	headphones and flat volume (need max-volume lock)
Product:	PulseAudio	Reporter:	Steffen <smikkelsendk>
Component:	core	Assignee:	pulseaudio-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	pulseaudio-bugs
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	lennart
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Steffen 2013-06-09 11:02:54 UTC

When using non-flat volumes together with headphones you risk being exposed to very loud volume.

With flat volumes you can set the master volume such that the maximum volume of any program will not higher than a bearable volume. Then you adjust the program volume in the range 80-100 % depending on how loud that given music-piece/movie-scene is.

However with non-flat volumes the program is not prevented from using the max possible volume that the soundcard can produce. This means that if the user by accident makes the volume in the program jump to maximum, then he can risk having hearing damage.

It can also be due to a bug, ie. a bug in VLC makes it possible for the sound to suddenly jump to maximum https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/8583

So my hope is that it will be possible to lock the maximum volume when having non-flat volume, so that its possible to use headphones without having to fear hearing damage.

Comment 1 Tanu Kaskinen 2013-06-10 13:25:25 UTC

Thanks for the bug report. Configurable maximum volume has been requested before, thus marking this as a duplicate of 46466.

BTW, your understanding of flat volumes is inverted. With flat volumes the stream volumes affect the device volume. Without flat volumes the two volumes are completely separate, so setting a stream volume to 100% doesn't make the device volume go to 100% too.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 46466 ***

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