Michael wrote: > On Wednesday, 22 October 2025 23:21:56 British Summer Time Carsten Hauck > wrote: >> >> This matches my experience. All my Gentoo machines have been ALSA-only >> and sound just works. >> >> Carsten > Without a sound daemon/server, or without configuring dmix in an alsa only > system, the sound device will play sound from one source at a time. A sound > server allows different sources to access the sound device and via some front > end offers independent volume adjustments for each source.
This is what I like about the new way. I can have one volume level for Firefox, another for Smplayer and yet another for mpv. It also tends to remember the volume levels as well. The old way, you had one volume control and if you change software that is playing audio, you often have to change the volume level. If not, you either have a hear ache or you can't hear much at all. There is one recent bug tho. I don't know if it is Firefox, the pipewire/whatever thingy or the website causing it. On some video websites, if the sound is to loud and I turn it down for Firefox as a example, after a fairly short amount of time, 20 seconds to sometimes as long as a minute, it switches back to my normal setting, usually louder. I already have a decent volume level for the master and such that I rarely need to adjust. However, some videos are just uploaded to be loud. It's hard to turn those down and it stay down for certain sites. I'm not sure if it may even be the website that does this. Some sites it stays where I put it, some sites it resets after a short period of time. It makes me think it might be some websites or just the way Firefox works with those sites. So far, that is the only problem I've had with the new pipewire/whatever method. Overall, I like it better. It gives me a lot more control and it remembers my settings better, even when I logout and back in. The only problem is the one above. I figure it will be worked out eventually. Unless it is just me. At first, I wasn't to big on it but I did give it a try. After I figured out how it worked, I started to like it. It does some things a LOT better than the old way. I guess me using my puter to watch TV, which means one video player that has it's own audio path, then playing other videos locally at times and other times playing videos from websites like Youtube and others. It's a lot to manage with just one volume control. Having a different control for each is just plain awesome. For those who think it is so bad, maybe you should just try it. Yea, it's different but that can be a good thing. If you only ever use a single audio player then maybe it is a bit much. Still, it can easily be made to work with that as well. At some point, the choice you have now may not work. It seems Firefox is picking one method to include so other methods may stop working at some point. Sometimes change sucks. Sometimes it can be a good thing. Dale :-) :-)
