GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 756764
Balance and Fade don't work as expected
Last modified: 2021-06-09 16:07:26 UTC
Created attachment 313574 [details] Video illustrating *some* of the issues, not all. I have come across a fairly major error in the Gnome control center sound panel when under a Wayland session. The balance and Fade controls are broken when compared to the X counterparts. Sliding Balance Up -> causes fade to slide a bit towards the front (as it does is X), however sliding balance back to center doesn't bring Fade all the way back, as it is off by a small amount from center. This causes lots of problems, because now there is an asynchrony between the sliders, which just gets worse the more you adjust one. Further, once adjusting the Fade option, it completely differentiates itself from the balance slider, and the two start moving eachother and in response to eachother in a completely unpredictable fashion. I recorded a small video kind of showing this, but I had terrible issues recording it because of the worst issue of the bunch: **Changing the Balance and Fade sliders and then turning down the output volume completely broke my audio. The sliders became completely unresponsive, and I could get no output from my speakers. Changing the profile from 5.1 to something else did not help, aside from changing it to Analog Stereo, in which I finally could get sound. To make matters worse, losing my 5.1 channel audio completely persisted through reboots, and also persisted in an X session. And I was forced to completely delete my .config and .cache folders before I could reboot and finally get my audio back.
I don't see why this would have anything to do with Wayland. The sliders are working, following the mouse. Maybe the behaviour is not what you'd expect, or there are bugs, but I don't see anything here that would be Wayland specific. To gather debug, run "gnome-control-center -v sound" and capture the output. You should also see whether you can reproduce the problem using pavucontrol instead of the GNOME Sound Settings. The persistent problems you saw can be forgotten when you remove the PulseAudio configuration files, usually in ~/.pulse/, and removing the ALSA settings (depends on your distribution).
Well something is Wayland specific, as I get two totally different experiences with those sliders depending on the environment. Namely being that under X my audio doesn't break. Also, under X the sliders act consistently, and under wayland I end up with the scenario of the sliders moving about in response to the other, but in totally incoherent ways. I'll do a debug in a bit once I get some coffee
Created attachment 313679 [details] More video of the issue
Created attachment 313680 [details] Video showing a total decoupling of the channels
Created attachment 313682 [details] Verobose output from GnomeCC under Wayland Here is the verbose output, and nothing really looks out of the ordinary. I have not been able to replicate the total sound loss that I was able to do easily before. Perhaps deleting the .config folder purged a setting that was causing that issue. Everything else still stands though. It has some wonky behavior when in a Wayland session. *pardon the choppyness ~50% through the video files. Gnome-Shell's screen recorder is not working perfectly I guess.
I cannot find any options in pavucontrol to change balance and fade. I did stumble across a new discovery that I was able to replicate the same issues in the video while on X. So you were right, Bastien, that it isn't a Wayland specific issue. It seems to be a much bigger issue than that.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kv7ih7c64f9l3m1/Screencast%202015-10-19%2010%3A26%3A00.mp4?dl=0 Here is a better screen cast. I think it accurately shows the severity of the issue.
Any chance on this getting some work for 3.20? I know you guys are working on redoing the whole control panel, perhaps some of this plumbing can get sorted out. After today's update to PulseAudio8.0 I still have all of these issues.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new bug report at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.