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advice1010

Member

Registered: 2023-02-19

Posts: 162

Volume controls for ALSA instead of PulseAudio plugin

Not sure if anyone will actually know about this.
Most of the time audio is handled by Panel plugin called `xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin`
Which basically is controlling Pipewire-pulseaudio.

I setup hotkeys for volume such as the following command

amixer set Master 5%+

which work as expected with this pulseaudio panel plugin.

However, sometimes some audio and video applications can benefit from using ALSA directly.
When this is the case, the panel speaker icon as well as the commands I mention above do not work.
The volume notifications still show but they do not control the volume.

Being that ultimately all audio ends up going to ALSA itself, I was wondering if there are any volume commands that can control its volume.  This way only one set of hotkeys would be required to control ALL volume.

I originally thought that "amixer" commands would just work for both because I believe the "a" is for ALSA Mixer but again this does not work.

I was wondering if anyone knew any commands that can handle volume control at the ALSA level, so that ALSA and PulseAudio applications can use only one set of hotkeys?

I would even be interested in what CL commands could be used to setup hotkeys to be able to adjust volume of ALSA itself, even if there has to be 2 different system volumes as mentioned above.

Hopefully this makes sense
Thank you to anyone who reads this

eriefisher

Wanderer

From: ON, Canada

Registered: 2008-10-25

Posts: 792

Re: Volume controls for ALSA instead of PulseAudio plugin

What applications don't work with pulseaudio properly? As far as I know all sound is handled the same way. Do you have dedicated volume keys?

Here is a place where I found a few options to manage audio volume in one place.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/question … ys-in-xfce

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