I recently upgraded from an old KDE3.5+arts installation to a full upgraded debian wheezy with kde4.8+phonon4.6+pulseaudio2.0+alsa upon installation i added pavucontrol1.0 and amarok2.6 to my desktop using the standard repositories (i use wheezy base + contrib + nonfree). the first time i started my installation i unmuted the alsa output via alsamixer (obviously). now i am trying to reach a confortable use case that i was used to with kde 3.5. In short i want to keep amarok playing from my collection at a soft volume level *and* hearing the system notifications (example, the email arrived) at a noticeable level *over* the music. with pavucontrol, I am setting the output volume in the "output devices" tab to a confortable high level, say a -2 db. this the maximum output i am allowing in this particular moment. this is my *master* level i want to adjust based on environment condition (if at the phone i lower this, if i'm alone i upper this) then in the playback section I set the "system sounds" stream at a confortably high level, say -4db, to get a noticeable notification, if i may. and then i set the libvlc audio stream that is opened by amarok at a much lover level, say -12db, to get a reasonable background music level (this is the control that moves using both the pavucontrol and the volume control of amarok interface. Now, i am writing this because i get an effect that is unplanned and i am searchin both an explanation for this and the method i need to implement to get che results i want, that are 1. get a single control to use to adapt to environment conditions (i'm on the phone, ecc.) 2. get a place to setup the relative levels of the sound sources. the effect i am getting is that *every* time i receive an email, i am notified by the kde system notifier with a sound, and this sound is played, obviously, at the level i set up with the system sounds control. what is *very* annoying is that while playing the sound, it seems that the master level is going up then down, so while i hear the notify i hear also the background music at a higher level for some deciseconds before and after the notification sounds, The overall results is as i go up with the master volume and then down. i read the document on the mixer logic, and i can see this mechanics based on a technical standpoint (it's more accurate to leave all volume sources to 0 db to get the max digital dynamic range and use only the master at the analog output to set the out level.) *BUT* this is good only from a single-source perspective. When i have the pulseaudio system mixing multiple sources, i cannot let the inner volume control (the control at the source) touch the outer control (the analog output in this case) because this will touch the level of another stream and this is no desired. how can i configure the control logic to return to an approach more like an analog mixer? thank you all. Andrea
