GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 649411
Sound level/slider not respecting the 100% cap when volume is increased
Last modified: 2011-08-29 11:36:11 UTC
Overview: Volume bar still goes over 100% when volume is increased via laptop keyboard media button. The volume slider from the panel applet still only shows volume at ~65% when volume reads as 100% in Sound Settings. Steps to Reproduce: Increase volume with respective keyboard key, or by using the volume slider available with the sound panel applet. Actual Results: Slider bar is able to be slide past the 100% cap, resulting in possible distortion due to overdrive. Expected Results: Slider bar should be congruent with the Sound Settings level, and when the slider bar is fully to the right, the sound level be at the 100% cap. Build Date & Platform: gnome-control-center 3.0.1.1 on Arch Linux Additional Information: It was brought to my attention that this behaviour was fixed with gnome-control center 3.0.1 http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-control-center/commit/?id=ce561eb68f43a5f38cfe4e87433b716264c4f462 Thus, it was suggested to me that this may be a different problem.
The maximum limit is (around) 150%, not 100%, because some machines have teeny speakers, and you want to be able to set a higher volume despite the possible distortion in some cases. There's also the fact that I don't understand what you're trying to explain is wrong. Make sure to mention the version number for gnome-shell and gnome-settings-daemon as well.
gnome-shell 3.0.1 gnome-shell-daemon 3.0.1 Quite often when you go over 100% it distorts the sound as you mentioned. Thus when one chooses to increase the volume via the sound extension slider bar on the gnome-shell panel (or via multimedia keys), it should respect the default 100% cap. On the slider bar on the sound extension on panel, when the setting fully to the right, it should put the sound to 100%, not ~150%. It makes it tricky to actually get a 100% output unless you go to Sound Preferences or memorize where the slide should be to be at the desirable 100% output. When I have my sound at 100%, I want the sound extension slider (the one you click on the panel) to reflect that, not show my sound as only 2/3 of the maximum overdrive of ~150%. To further clarify, this is how the slider currently looks at 100% output |------------O-------| This is how it should look |-------------------O| I think that anything over 100% should have to be manually set from Sound Preferences, because quite often it gives a degraded sound output.
I'm having the same "problem". I'm not sure it is actually a problem as it seems to be the expected behaviour but, like Nigel I don't think we should destort the sound by default :) So, the volume control applet should really stop at 100% and NOT use any overdrive (software amplification) unless configured for doing so. I see the bug is in NEEDINFO status, please let me know if any further can be provided.
maybe there should be a tick mark at 100% like Sound Settings has
I'm not sure that would solve the problem: 1. when ramping up/down the volume via the panel applet using the scroll wheel (which I suppose is the most common use case) you won't see if and when the slider is at 100% 2. if, by mistake, you bring it over 100% then again the sound will be distorted by some unwanted software amplification enabled by default I'd just like to have a checkbox which enables/disables the use of the overdrive. In the end, I just don't think we should "distort the sound by default".
One idea to address 1 would be some sort of resistance when it hits 100% (maybe an extra scroll or two to get over the "hump" ?). I don't think 2 is always unwanted. Sometimes slightly tinny but audible sound is desired over sound that's too muted to hear comprehensibly. Note, the slider was explicitly changed from the way you want to the way it is now in bug 641886
I suppose I'm in the minority then. My main cause of concern is degraded sound output. It makes absolutely no sense for my volume bar on the panel to show as 2/3 full volume when I am running at 100%. In my opinion the overdrive option should only be available with manual intervention. That is you can use the panel icon to mouse scroll the volume up, or use media keys to increase the volume to 100%, and it shows as full volume icon on the panel, and if you want to overdrive (100~150%), you have to manually click the sound icon and set it with the mouse, or go to Sound Settings. Perhaps I'm bias and every user doesn't suffer the same inferior sound output in overdrive, but it's a minor annoyance to have to constantly monitor where and how far I can increase my volume within acceptable levels.
@nigel I'm in your same "minority" @ray I don't think 2 is always unwanted either, but the overdrive is actually causing sound distortions, so I would prefer to see it as something that users can enable/disable (and eventually NOT enabled by default) now thanks for pointing out the bug 641886, but I'm not sure the two things are related specifically I can't find out why and when gvc_mixer_stream_get_can_decibel() returns true, nor why this should be translated into a "fixed" augmentation of the sound level slider to 150%, but it would be great if you could shed some light here as Nigel my concern here is the distorted sound output, caused by some software amplification (overdrive), used if the slider is brought after 100% (PA_VOLUME_NORM)
I think this really should be changed back as it will confuse new users when they put their sound at max and hear a distorted or garbled sound they will think is a problem with OS or Linux in general. I was actually wondering this myself when I used gnome 3 on a new install of Arch Linux.
Or at least make a setting to change it to cap at 100%
Yes, I absolutely agree. Don't allow the volume to go above 100% and distort the sound by default. At the very least, there needs to be some visual indication of the 100% mark. It took me a while to figure out why suddenly my audio was distorted.
I think the behaviour in Fedora 14 is the best way to go about this. When using the mediakeys or scrolling over the volume applet icon, the scale goes from 0% to 100%. However, if you open up the full volume panel you can then drag the slider out to 150%. This allows the very useful feature of boosting sound through tiny laptop speakers, without distorting them by default through the volume buttons.
I've added a comment to the bug #641886 to find out why the old good behaviour has been changed. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=641886#c10 At the same time, I'm thinking about writing an extension to fix at least the slider on the top bar. I'm also attaching a rather stupid but not disruptive patch file which you can apply to "volume.js" to get the slider capped at 100% (you need to re-login to see the changes applied to volume.js)
Created attachment 191914 [details] [review] rather stupid patch for volume.js which always caps the top bar volume slider at 100%
Created attachment 191915 [details] [review] rather stupid patch for volume.js which always caps the top bar volume slider at 100% the previous patch file was incorrectly formatted :(
Taking this out of RESO NEEDINFO since this is a valid issue -- on most machines, we /don't/ want to default to software amplification. As suggested above, limiting this to the control in the preferences dialog should be a good enough compromise IMO.
commit 2d436da432d1dfb00eb98ed075ded8b4a4574af2 Author: Bastien Nocera <hadess@hadess.net> Date: Mon Aug 29 12:31:36 2011 +0100 media-keys: Don't go up to 11 Revert patch from bug https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=631030 We don't actually want to go to 11 and allow users to blindly get into software amplification territory. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649411