Hello Pierre, Pierre Neidhardt writes: […] > I'd put the blame on conky / Pulseaudio for now :) I have a different Pulseaudio behavior. Sometimes I use a program which does not use Pulseaudio but Alsa, then I need to start Pulseaudio manually if there is no program which produces a sound, e.g. with ‘pulsemixer’. In ‘pulsemixer’ I'll have ‘PROGRAM_NAME: AudioStream’ string after launching Alsa only program, which means I can contol Alsa only program with Pulseaudio. If I don't run Pulseaudio manually, then Alsa only program will still a device until the program will be killed. I don't use any desktop environment, which usually run Pulseaudio automatically as I know. Does Conky show you a Pulseaudio current volume? Conky probably runs Pulseaudio to do it. Also, it will be better to test a Pulseaudio behavior in a clean environment, e.g. by using a window manager like Ratpoison. Oleg.