Bug 374919

It is played through "Notification Sounds" stream, so it must be unmuted and have non-zero volume.

Created attachment 103354 [details]
Notification Sounds

If I understand you correctly, Notification Sounds is set to 100% but still no tone I can hear. Please see the screen shot.

Yes, that's correct. I'm not sure what might be wrong. Can you please run plasmashell in terminal and upload output when scrolling mouse over volume icon / using volume shortcuts?

Thanks for the very quick replies by the way!
I restarted plasmashell from the terminal and see absolutely nothing when scrolling the mouse wheel. I also tried to run plasmawindowed org.kde.plasma.volume. Same thing. No output when scrolling.

I spent a little time playing with volumefeedback.cpp and recompiling plasma-pa. Suddenly, reassigning sinkIndex to 0 in void VolumeFeedback::play(quint32 sinkIndex) seem to help:

char dev[64];
sinkIndex = 0; // <---
snprintf(dev, sizeof(dev), "%lu", (unsigned long) sinkIndex);
ca_context_change_device(m_context, dev);

Didn't investigate that further though... Any ideas?

You can try to add a debug statement and print the sinkIndex that it tries to use, and check which sink it is with "pactl list sinks".

It should play the volume feedback on the "preferred sink" - the device that is displayed in applet tooltip and is controlled with volume shortcuts.

Ok, tried to print sinkIndex. It's always equal to 2 in my case.
Meanwhile, pactl list sinks shows the following:

Sink #0
        State: SUSPENDED
        Name: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
        Description: Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
        Driver: module-alsa-card.c
        Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
        Channel Map: front-left,front-right
        Owner Module: 8
        Mute: no
        Volume: front-left: 49151 /  75% / -7.50 dB,   front-right: 49151 /  75% / -7.50 dB
                balance 0.00
        Base Volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
        Monitor Source: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor
        Latency: 0 usec, configured 0 usec
        Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY 
        Properties:
                alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
                device.api = "alsa"
                device.class = "sound"
                alsa.class = "generic"
                alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
                alsa.name = "ALC272 Analog"
                alsa.id = "ALC272 Analog"
                alsa.subdevice = "0"
                alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
                alsa.device = "0"
                alsa.card = "1"
                alsa.card_name = "HDA Intel PCH"
                alsa.long_card_name = "HDA Intel PCH at 0xe9614000 irq 34"
                alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
                device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1b.0"
                sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card1"
                device.bus = "pci"
                device.vendor.id = "8086"
                device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
                device.product.id = "8c20"
                device.product.name = "8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller"
                device.form_factor = "internal"
                device.string = "front:1"
                device.buffering.buffer_size = "352800"
                device.buffering.fragment_size = "176400"
                device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
                device.profile.name = "analog-stereo"
                device.profile.description = "Analog Stereo"
                device.description = "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo"
                alsa.mixer_name = "Realtek ALC272"
                alsa.components = "HDA:10ec0272,17aa367b,00100002"
                module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
                device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
        Ports:
                analog-output-speaker: Speakers (priority: 10000)
                analog-output-headphones: Headphones (priority: 9000, not available)
        Active Port: analog-output-speaker
        Formats:
                pcm

Let me share a bit more of my findings about the issue.
According to applet/contents/ui/main.qml it seems that playFeedback() function is called each time we increase/decrease volume.
In playFeedback() sinkIndex = sinkModel.preferredSink.cardIndex when no args are passed to the function.

In PA I have Card #2 and alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo is the default sink:

$ pacmd list-sinks 
1 sink(s) available.
  * index: 0
        name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>
        driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
        flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY DYNAMIC_LATENCY
        state: SUSPENDED
        suspend cause: IDLE 
        priority: 9959
        volume: front-left: 55705 /  85% / -4.24 dB,   front-right: 55705 /  85% / -4.24 dB
                balance 0.00
        base volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
        volume steps: 65537
        muted: no
        current latency: 0.00 ms
        max request: 0 KiB
        max rewind: 0 KiB
        monitor source: 0
        sample spec: s16le 2ch 48000Hz
        channel map: front-left,front-right
                     Stereo
        used by: 0
        linked by: 0
        configured latency: 0.00 ms; range is 0.50 .. 1837.50 ms
        card: 2 <alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1b.0>
...

$ pactl info
...
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
...

So I suppose this is why I get sinkIndex = 2 and things don't work for me. What do you think?

Yes, that's it, thanks for the investigation! :)

Changing sinkModel.preferredSink.cardIndex to sinkModel.preferredSink.index in playFeedback() in applet code should fix it.

https://phabricator.kde.org/D4105

Thanks for the suggestion! sinkModel.preferredSink.index in playFeedback() fix did the trick on my system. It was a big challenge for me to dig into the code with absolutely no experience in C++/Qt! :D

Git commit 27c8c9aa84b42640bbc65ea64f15cbdf4b6705e3 by David Rosca.
Committed on 12/01/2017 at 14:51.
Pushed by drosca into branch 'Plasma/5.8'.

Pass correct index to playFeedback

It expects index of the sink, not card index.
FIXED-IN: 5.8.6

Differential Revision: https://phabricator.kde.org/D4105

M  +1    -1    applet/contents/ui/ListItemBase.qml
M  +1    -1    applet/contents/ui/main.qml

https://commits.kde.org/plasma-pa/27c8c9aa84b42640bbc65ea64f15cbdf4b6705e3