[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#677014: xfce4-volumed: no support for pulseaudio / multiple cards

[Andres Cimmarusti]

Package: xfce4-volumed
Version: 0.1.13-3
Severity: normal

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.

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

This is a well known bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/xfce4-volumed/+bug/883485

In the ubuntu bug thread, two workarounds are suggested. One is to do 
away with xfce4-volumed (a developer admits it doesn't support pulse), 
so that custom key bindings can be defined (more robust solution) or do 
this:

$ xfconf-query -c xfce4-mixer -p /active-card -s `xfconf-query -c 
xfce4-mixer -p /sound-card`

This last command works, but it's not robust enough to handle multiple 
cards (e.g. HDMI outputs):

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...

There is a patch referred in the ubuntu thread:
https://launchpadlibrarian.net/101001716/xfce4-volumed_0.1.13-2ubuntu2.debdiff

However, Ubuntu uses pulseaudio by default while Debian does not. I'm 
not sure this patch is robust enough to handle both cases. I hope the 
maintainer can take a look.

Thanks. For now, I try to make the first workaround work.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages xfce4-volumed depends on:
ii  gstreamer0.10-alsa [gstreamer0.10-audiosink]          0.10.36-1
ii  gstreamer0.10-gconf [gstreamer0.10-audiosink]         0.10.31-3
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad [gstreamer0.10-audiosink]   0.10.23-6
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good [gstreamer0.10-audiosink]  0.10.31-3
ii  gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio [gstreamer0.10-audiosink]    0.10.31-3
ii  libc6                                                 2.13-33
ii  libglib2.0-0                                          2.32.3-1
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0                       0.10.36-1
ii  libgstreamer0.10-0                                    0.10.36-1
ii  libgtk2.0-0                                           2.24.10-1
ii  libkeybinder0                                         0.2.2-4
ii  libnotify4                                            0.7.5-1
ii  libxfconf-0-2                                         4.8.1-1

xfce4-volumed recommends no packages.

xfce4-volumed suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information