When going to multimedia, then to audio and video settings, then when clicking test for the selected audio playback device, the volumes for the device and the event sound profile change to 100%. Reproducible: Always
That is by design apparently. // Just to be very sure that nothing messes our test sound up m_audioOutput->setVolume(1.0); m_audioOutput->setMuted(false); Supposedly it's to prevent having accidentally muted/lowered the volume such that the sound would be inaudible and then causing confusion. Which is actually a bit weird because that would only manipulate the application/notification volume in a lot of setups still allowing for the device itself to be muted. The reason this causes your notification volume to increase volume is probably because your pulseaudio is configured to use flat volumes which means that increasing the volume to 100 for the test will increase it to 100 for the entire device (which as I was saying is arguably more to the point of what the volume setting is supposed to achieve). I am not sure what to do here. If anything it's working as intended, I do however appreciate how this might be not so desirable. CCing Colin, maybe he has an opinion on the matter.
What about a warning that the sound might be louder than anticipated? Or ramping it up so it isn't jarring to the user? Or a message telling the user that the volume might be too low if it is below a certain percentage? Anything is better than current behaviour, which can cause excessive loudness.
*** Bug 345652 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Almost a year later and today I noticed this behaviour is still present...the very hard (loud) way ! If there's a way to set the audio level with setVolume(..) maybe you can first check what the current level is with getVolume(..) ? And if it's below 50% or so crank it up ? At least set it back to whatever value it was when the test is over - if you really must set it to 100% to begin with.