WebkitGTK-based browsers: System volume suddenly maxed out when playing audio or video

WebkitGTK-based browsers: System volume suddenly maxed out when playing audio or video

[Alek Zikon]

Everytime audio or video starts playing on WebkitGTK-based browsers (epiphany, next), the system volume is maxed out. This happens when you start the audio or video by clicking on the play button and also when audio or videos are played automatically (in a playlist, or ad videos, for example).

This issue has been reported before upstream, but epiphany people say the source of the problem is in pulsaudio defaults on distros (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/issues/73):

  Thanks for reporting this issue. You'll need to ask Debian to disable
  PulseAudio's flat volumes feature, as is done by all other major
  distributions (Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, openSUSE, probably more),
  since we're not going to make any changes here.

I found that there is a related pulsaudio bug reported on Guix (https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/38172). Unfortunately, this issue is still open.

Epiphany people say you, as a user, can work around the issue by setting "flat-volumes = no in your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf." What's the correct way to this on the Guix System?


I'm using this software:

epiphany 3.30.4
WebKitGTK+ 2.26.1
GNOME 3.30.2

$ guix describe
Generation 16	Jan 03 2020 14:36:37	(current)
  guix 7158fe4
    repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
    branch: master
    commit: 7158fe4ded47a599ceb8d556132ba83fcc686962

Re: WebkitGTK-based browsers: System volume suddenly maxed out when playing audio or video

[raingloom]

On Mon, 2020-01-06 at 18:02 +0000, Alek Zikon wrote:
> Everytime audio or video starts playing on WebkitGTK-based browsers
> (epiphany, next), the system volume is maxed out. This happens when
> you start the audio or video by clicking on the play button and also
> when audio or videos are played automatically (in a playlist, or ad
> videos, for example).
> 
> This issue has been reported before upstream, but epiphany people say
> the source of the problem is in pulsaudio defaults on distros (
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/issues/73):
> 
>   Thanks for reporting this issue. You'll need to ask Debian to
> disable
>   PulseAudio's flat volumes feature, as is done by all other major
>   distributions (Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, openSUSE, probably more),
>   since we're not going to make any changes here.
> 
> I found that there is a related pulsaudio bug reported on Guix (
> https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/38172). Unfortunately, this issue
> is still open.
> 
> Epiphany people say you, as a user, can work around the issue by
> setting "flat-volumes = no in your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf." What's
> the correct way to this on the Guix System?
> 
> 
> I'm using this software:
> 
> epiphany 3.30.4
> WebKitGTK+ 2.26.1
> GNOME 3.30.2
> 
> $ guix describe
> Generation 16	Jan 03 2020 14:36:37	(current)
>   guix 7158fe4
>     repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
>     branch: master
>     commit: 7158fe4ded47a599ceb8d556132ba83fcc686962
> 
CC-ing https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/38172