Xfce Forum

acimmarusti

Member

Registered: 2012-06-11

Posts: 5

[SOLVED]xfce mixer, volumed and pulseaudio multiple outputs

Dear all,

I need to use pulseaudio and pavucontrol to be able to easily toggle between HDMI audio output to a TV and laptop speakers. I also want to use xfce volumed and mixer to control audio with special Fn keys.

Sadly xfce volumed does not use pulse by default, but interacts directly with the sound card. This has two problems:

1. Volumed points to sound card, and when I mute with Fn+keyboard, it mutes pulseaudio but cannot unmute it!

I tried this workaround to solve this issue:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xfce#Xfce4-volumed

I thought this was fixed, but then I ran into another problem:

2. When I switch to HDMI, audio control with Fn keys is useless. Furthermore, when I use pavucontrol to switch back to laptop speakers, volumed continues to be useless...

Please help!

Thanks

Last edited by acimmarusti (2012-06-12 01:26:45)

secipolla

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 393

Re: [SOLVED]xfce mixer, volumed and pulseaudio multiple outputs

I don't have a laptop but can't you assign the Fn keys to a script like http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=74762 (instead of using xfce volumed)?

Last edited by secipolla (2012-06-11 12:45:11)

acimmarusti

Member

Registered: 2012-06-11

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED]xfce mixer, volumed and pulseaudio multiple outputs

I don't have a laptop but can't you assign the Fn keys to a script like http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=74762 (instead of using xfce volumed)?

Yes. Ultimately that's the only reliable / robust solution I found. It's a bit of a workaround and I had to modify the script in order to make it work with several outputs coming from the same pulseaudio sink.

Rejoicing for free software!

Last edited by acimmarusti (2012-06-12 01:28:23)

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2011-04-11

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED]xfce mixer, volumed and pulseaudio multiple outputs

I don't have a laptop but can't you assign the Fn keys to a script like http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=74762 (instead of using xfce volumed)?

Yes. Ultimately that's the only reliable / robust solution I found. It's a bit of a workaround and I had to modify the script in order to make it work with several outputs coming from the same pulseaudio sink.

Rejoicing for free software!

I've found a few nice solutions recently, right now I'm using something called pulsemix:
https://github.com/gulafaran/pulsemix

Another one I used is called pamixer, which was also nice (but pulsemix has a nice feature that pamixer lacks, where it limits the max volume to 150% to avoid blowing your speakers/ears accidently )

You can map its commands to xfce's keyboard settings like you can with the scripts, and it should run less processes then the scripts. It seems to work alright with multiple outputs from the same sink (so far I've only tested my speakers and headphones though, I have yet to test my hdmi output)

EDIT: just tested with my hdmi output and it works great there too.

Last edited by bwat47 (2012-06-30 23:30:21)

acimmarusti

Member

Registered: 2012-06-11

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED]xfce mixer, volumed and pulseaudio multiple outputs

I've found a few nice solutions recently, right now I'm using something called pulsemix:
https://github.com/gulafaran/pulsemix

Another one I used is called pamixer, which was also nice (but pulsemix has a nice feature that pamixer lacks, where it limits the max volume to 150% to avoid blowing your speakers/ears accidently )

You can map its commands to xfce's keyboard settings like you can with the scripts, and it should run less processes then the scripts. It seems to work alright with multiple outputs from the same sink (so far I've only tested my speakers and headphones though, I have yet to test my hdmi output)

EDIT: just tested with my hdmi output and it works great there too.

Thanks for this!. Yes, I realize the script I modified does not stop the volume increase at 100% (though I think I can easily implement this). I will give pulsemix a try when I have some time.