If I change the volume of pulseaudio using anything but xfce4-mixer, or the tray plugin, neither xfce4-mixer or the tray plugin are aware of the volume change. If for example, I mute my default sink using /usr/bin/pactl... all sound output is indeed muted, but both the tray plugin and xfce4-mixer do not show the source as muted. This is also true with the volume level adjusted up or down. In the past, xfce4-mixer and its tray plugin did reflect the true volume level and mute status. I am not sure exactly when this broke. It could be after the pulseaudio update to v4 which was around June/2013 but I am not totally sure. My system is Arch Linux which is up-to-date: *Pulseaudio v4.0 *Libpulse v4.0 *Xfce4-mixer v4.10.0 I also build xfce4-mixer from git (4.10.0.73.gf960a0a) but this did not fix the behavior I describe.
The mixer will also mute the channel when you set it to 0 but won't unmute it when you raise the volume back up.
@Tak - Please do not post irrelevant info to this bug report.
I wasn't unable to reproduce this with pactl or pavucontrol as the other mixers. I'm using: xubuntu 13.10 pulseaudio 4.0 libpulse 4.0.0 xfce4-mixer 4.10.0 I tried both of these indicators: audio mixer plugin indicator-sound-gtk2 I am using HDMI as a sink and had the master track selected in applicable mixers.
> I wasn't unable to reproduce this with pactl or pavucontrol as the other > mixers. I meant to type I wasn't ABLE to reproduce this.
Archlinux: *pulseaudio v4.0-6 *liibpulse v4.0-6 *xfce4-mixer v4.10.0-2 On Built-in Audio Stereo Through pavucontrol I can confirm that changing the volume is now reflected by xfce4-mixer. Likewise can be said if you change the volume through xfce4-mixer to pavucontrol. If you mute the sink through pavucontrol (or dropping the volume all the way down in the mixer), it is reflected correctly on xfce4-mixer. However if you raise the volume up through xfce4-mixer while the sink is muted it won't unmute it although the mixer says it is.
I cannot confirm the findings in Comment #5. On my system. settings in pavucontrol are not reflected in xfce4-mixer. *pulseaudio v4.0-6 *libpulse v4.0-6 *xfce4-mixer v4.10.0-2
xfce4-mixer is effectively dead, especially in regards to PulseAudio support. Use xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin instead.