[gentoo-user] Re: Gnome audio (mixer) question [SOLVED YET AGAIN]

[Peter Weilbacher]

On 25.10.2009 18:07, walt wrote:
> On 10/25/2009 08:19 AM, walt wrote:
>
>> Merging gnome-media with the pulseaudio USE flag breaks
>> gnome-volume-control most horribly IMO, but OTOH I don't
>> understand pulseaudio, so maybe I'm wrong.
>
> I found the gnome 2.26 upgrade guide, which points to the
> pulseaudio documentation.
>
> It seems that pulseaudio has its own mixer control (not
> included in gentoo's pulseaudio package) so maybe it does
> make sense to remove that function from gnome's volume
> control applet.

Looking at the pulseaudio documentation it seems to be a very
well-designed system. But there are so many components to it that I
found it very confusing to configure. In fact, after fiddling around
with it for two days, I gave up on that, removed USE=pulseaudio
again, and rebuilt world.
Now I only have the problem that I cannot start the GNOME "Volume
Control" applet any more. When I try I get

   Some panel items are no longer available
   One or more panel items (also referred to as applets) are
   no longer available in the GNOME desktop.

   These items will now be removed from your configuration:
    • Volume Control
   You will not receive this message again.

so I have to go to the full mixer in the menu instead.

My problem was that I never got any sound out of it, with any
application. And I lost all but one mixer slider. With the alsa-based
backend, my system has the peculiarity that it starts up with "Front"
and "Headphone" levels at 100% but muted and Master at 100% (unmuted),
I always have to unmute "Front" before I want any sound. With
pulseaudio active, all but the "Master" slider were gone, so I didn't
have any way to influence the levels on the other components. At
least that's what I am thinking might have been going on, but maybe
I'm wrong.

   Peter.