Bug 75643

Summary:	Please make pavucontrol have a default device option like gnome-volume-control
Product:	PulseAudio	Reporter:	N. W. <nw9165-3201>
Component:	pavucontrol	Assignee:	pulseaudio-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:	pulseaudio-bugs
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium	CC:	lennart, rdieter
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description N. W. 2014-03-01 16:33:51 UTC

Hello,

I came across the following tutorial:

http://www.webupd8.org/2013/03/install-pulseaudio-with-built-in-system.html

which explains how to use qpaeq, the built-in system wide equalizer of PulseAudio.

Well, as described in that tutorial and as can be seen in the following picture:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-r3IabLvI3cM/UUBsE6PguEI/AAAAAAAAOjM/joUZhqyId0c/s1600/sound-settings.png

one must select "FFT based equalizer on..." as the default output device to make qpaeq work.

As you can see in the picture, this can be done easily in gnome-volume-control, as it has a "Play sound through" option on the "Output" tab, where you simply click on the device you want to have sound play through (default output device).

However, I wanted to do the same in Lubuntu.

Lubuntu does not come with PulseAudio installed by default. So i installed it.

Lubuntu also does not come with gnome-volume-control, as it is using LXDE.

GNOME, Unity, Cinnamon, MATE and so on do have the gnome-volume-control (or forks of it). But LXDE and Xfce for example do not have the gnome-volume-control (AFAIK).

So, I installed pavucontrol on Lubuntu and thought it could act as an alternative for gnome-volume-control...

However, in pavucontrol, I could not find an option to choose the default output device.

So, i digged a little further and finally came up with the following page:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/DefaultDevice/

Among other things, the page mentions the following:

"[...]

If you, for example, plug in a new sound card and want it to be the default device from now on, you can tell PulseAudio to change the fallback sink to the new sound card, but that will only have effect on programs that PulseAudio hasn't seen before. For this particular use case the current (as of 2010-01-23) state-of-the-art method to move everything to the new sound card is to use gnome-volume-control version 2.28, which modifies the stream-restore database when you set some device as the default

[...]"

Now, I am really wondering: Why is gnome-volume-control the state-of-the-art method to do this? Why not pavucontrol?

Why is that functionality in gnome-volume-control but not in pavucontrol?

Can't you just make pavucontrol have the same functionality?

It would be much appreciated.

Regards

Comment 1 Raymond 2014-03-02 02:30:44 UTC

What is Lubuntu ?

Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE), as its default GUI. The goal is to provide a very lightweight distribution, with all the advantages of the Ubuntu world (repositories, support, etc.). Lubuntu is targeted at "normal" PC and laptop users running on low-spec hardware.


you should choose other flavour

Comment 2 Tanu Kaskinen 2014-03-03 08:24:36 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> Why is that functionality in gnome-volume-control but not in pavucontrol?
> 
> Can't you just make pavucontrol have the same functionality?

The Gnome UI model is that all applications routed to the same device, while pavucontrol has been designed for a model where each application has individual routing. I don't think we should implement the same model in pavucontrol as in gnome-volume-control, or at least it should be optional.

Ideally, the desktop environment (or user) would somehow configure the routing model in PulseAudio, and then pavucontrol would automatically adapt to the configured routing model.

Comment 3 N. W. 2014-03-04 14:05:28 UTC

First of all, thanks for your replies.

(In reply to comment #1)
> you should choose other flavour

Why?

You quoted the goals of Lubuntu prior to saying that.

Could you please explain in which way the goals of Lubuntu contradict with using PulseAudio?

(In reply to comment #2)
> I don't think we should implement the same model in
> pavucontrol as in gnome-volume-control, or at least it should be optional.

I have nothing againt this being optional. I actually would prefer it being optional.

I didn't ask to remove anything from pavucontrol.

I just would like to have pavucontrol have a similar default device option as in gnome-volume-control.

Also, the DefaultDevice Wiki page mentioned earlier says that gnome-volume-control would be the "state-of-the-art method".

Maybe it's just me, but I personally think it's kinda wrong to have to use GNOME to be able to use a PulseAudio setting in a state-of-the-art way.

IMHO, pavucontrol should offer the state-of-the-art method.

Comment 4 Tanu Kaskinen 2014-03-04 16:11:12 UTC

(In reply to comment #3)
> Also, the DefaultDevice Wiki page mentioned earlier says that
> gnome-volume-control would be the "state-of-the-art method".
> 
> Maybe it's just me, but I personally think it's kinda wrong to have to use
> GNOME to be able to use a PulseAudio setting in a state-of-the-art way.
> 
> IMHO, pavucontrol should offer the state-of-the-art method.

Yes, I agree. This is not something that should be implemented in gnome-volume-control or pavucontrol anyway. There should be server-side logic that reroutes streams when the default device changes.

I think this wouldn't be particularly hard to implement in module-stream-restore or in some other module. Unfortunately, I don't have time to implement new features (unless my employer asks for them). So, I can only say "patches welcome".

Comment 5 N. W. 2016-04-16 13:40:47 UTC

Any update?

Comment 6 kolorafa 2016-08-23 19:47:03 UTC

nw9165-3201@yahoo.com 

You can do that just now, as far as i know "pavucontrol" have a "default" output for new playbacks.

You can do the same as me, add one virtual sink (with volume normalization, or normal one without any effect).

Set default output to that virtual sink.

And whenever you want to switch sound for all your applications to different output, you just need to switch one "app".

I just added:

~/.config/pulse/default.pa 
.nofail
.include /etc/pulse/default.pa
load-module module-ladspa-sink  sink_name=ladspa_normalized  plugin=fast_lookahead_limiter_1913  label=fastLookaheadLimiter  control=10,0,0.8
set-default-sink ladspa_normalized


And now i have nice volume normalization + one switch to change all apps to different output.

Comment 7 GitLab Migration User 2018-07-30 09:31:21 UTC

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