Comment # 9 on bug 922401 from Christian Bachmaier

As a work-around I have now set flat-volumes = no. Then the master is not
changed without user interaction any more. However, the system sound slider in
KMix is set automatically to 66% every time a system sound is played destroying
the balance to other sound sources.

> But flat-volumes=false, which is the source of this problem, is set by default.

flat-volumes = yes was commented out, and yes is the default and not false. I
have never changed the file daemon.conf before.

>>> - turn off PulseAudio (YaST->Hardware->Sound->Other->PulseAudio
>>> Configuration) or uninstall it
>> Ok, seems to be rather hard.
> Hm? What's hard about that?

I mean, it is not hard to do that. But openSUSE default is to have it active
and to use it. I suspect, that this has some reasons.

> Maybe you raised the volume for notifications in PulseAudio itself?

No. pavucontrol was not installed on my system until now.

> PulseAudio basically allows a separate volume setting for each application.
> You should be able to set the volume for notifications in KMix or pavucontrol.

Changeing the loudness of system sounds in pavucontrol to 25% does not change
anything.

> I think I will install/enable PulseAudio again and play with this over the
> weekend...

Wolfgang, thanks again for your help.

> But actual notifications should be played at the correct (lower) volume.

No, I don't see that. It is rather hard to find/trigger an automatic sound
without using the control center despite logoff. Any suggestions?

The old behavior with a slider in control center was better. In my opionion the
system sound level should not be changed automatically. So once has changed in
KMix (or with the slider in the control center since in KMix is is only shortly
during playing the notification sound) the level should be left as is.
pavucontrol should not be needed, since a KDE user has KMix and pavucontrol is
not installed in a default installation.

Chris