Bug 161919

Summary: [usability] no sound due to faulty presets
Product: [Applications] kmix Reporter: Kenobi <kazmirzak>
Component: generalAssignee: Christian Esken <esken>
Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM    
Severity: normal CC: francescortiz
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Ubuntu   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Kenobi 2008-05-10 20:14:27 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.0.3)
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages
OS:                Linux

After installation I first thought that Kubuntu 8.04 KDE 4 had broken the support for my sound card.

But then I saw that virtually all sliders for any possible audio channel are MUTED and Volume=0! I have a 4.1 System and not a single box got a signal due to these settings.

I think it is absolutely wrong to mute a channel by default - a channel you won't even see in KMix by default! Please change this behaviour as soon as possible as people might be driven to the decision not to use ubuntu because of the (experienced) lack of sound support!!
Comment 1 A. Spehr 2008-05-13 07:43:49 UTC
I have an irc report of someone that hit that in a gentoo build from trunk, so apparently I'm wrong in thinking it's a distro thing.

It seems kind of nasty usability-wise, so I'm adding that tag.
Comment 2 Christian Esken 2008-05-16 08:56:44 UTC
Does it also happen when you disable sound restoration in KMix. For testing:

1) Disable sound restoration in KMix's configuration dialog.
2) Set reasonable sound levels
3) Reboot machine and login again.
Comment 3 Kenobi 2008-05-16 21:18:16 UTC
Yes, when I set reasonable sound levels then it works, of course.

This post is about Ubuntu delivering Linux with unreasonable sound levels. This WILL be a problem for thousands of novices.
Comment 4 Christian Esken 2008-05-17 13:16:39 UTC
OK, then this is an issue of Ubuntu. Please report it there, as KMix is not responsible for setting reasonable volume levels. The distribution (really!) has to do that.
So did I understand you correct, that it is independent from KMix's sound restoration?
Comment 5 Kenobi 2008-05-17 18:41:14 UTC
Without further investigations I dare to say that this is a problem of KDE and all KDE Projects including KUbuntu. I don't believe that it is correct in KDE and only "broken-patched" by Kubuntu. Any official statements on this?? Where does KMIX get its default values from??


And it has nothing to do with sound restoration. All I had to do is fix the level of a couple of sliders, and there was the sound.
Comment 6 Christian Esken 2008-05-18 19:30:34 UTC
Neither KDE, nor KMix is responsible for setting the soundcard. The distribution (really, really, really!) has to do that. Many/most distributions do that. If KUbuntu doesn#t do it, please report it there.

Repeating in other words: KDE has NOTHING to do with setting initial volumes. This has to be done by the operating system, for example during booting the system. ALSA provides the tool alsactl for that, and distributions have to use that.

Short investigation shows that it seems to be a common problem while upgrading to 8.04. See for example http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=765443
Comment 7 Kenobi 2008-05-20 16:02:26 UTC
By the way, this is not the first time I experience this problem. So there is at least more than one distro affected. And it was not an upgrade, it was a fresh installation. 

But you might be right that it not a problem of KDE. Any idea where else I should post this then? Ubuntu-Launchpad was referring me to bugs.kde.org.
Comment 8 Christian Esken 2008-05-20 22:22:11 UTC
OK. I'll reopen this until we can get to some solution with Ubuntu. As a reference, this is https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase-kde4/+bug/225836 .
Comment 9 Christian Esken 2008-10-27 02:24:20 UTC
OK, this was and is still an upstream bug. Closing this with resolution "UPLSTREAM".
Comment 10 Francesc Ortiz 2010-08-31 09:54:30 UTC
In my case it was pulseaudio. My master and front channels got muted after login (but not during login). I saw that gconfd-2 and pulseaudio got started with my session. I solved the situation uninstalling pulseadio.

As you can see, pulseaudio has some tendency to mute channels:
http://www.google.es/search?q=pulseaudio+login+muted