Comment 4 for bug 1498466

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 12:59 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Specifically, iOS's "Ringer and alerts" slider is followed by a "Change
> with Buttons" switch. When off, it has a caption: "The volume of the
> ringer and alerts will not be affected by the volume buttons." When on,
> the caption is: "The volume of the ringer and alerts can be adjusted
> using the volume buttons."
>
> Until now I had never understood this setting, because none of that text
> answered the vital question: What is the effect of the off state? When
> the switch is off, what *do* the volume buttons adjust? From testing it
> now, it seems that when it's off, the volume buttons always change media
> volume. When it's on, the volume buttons change media volume when media
> is playing, ringer/alert volume when media isn't playing, like the
> specced-but-unimplemented Ubuntu behavior.
>
> Anyway, I don't think System Settings is relevant to this bug, because
> you shouldn't have to switch to System Settings and back while playing a
> game.
>

I agree, I was thinking more along the lines of you set the alert volume
ahead of time that would be good, but I agree, if it's too loud for a given
context this is problematic. I did, however, just notice on iOS that a game
uses the same volume level as the music playback level. If you're in a game
and set the volume, then switch back to the music app, the music app uses
this new volume. This is exactly how it should be for Ubuntu Touch.

>
> --
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> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1498466
>
> Title:
> Default audio role for volume controls isn't the role that sound
> effects use
>
> Status in Canonical System Image:
> New
> Status in qtubuntu-media package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> 1. Play a game that just plays occasional sound effects, not music.
> 2. Try to change the volume of the sound effects.
>
> What should happen: You can.
> What actually happens: You can't unless you time it exactly right,
> pressing the volume controls while the sound effect is playing.
>
> For brief sounds (less than a second or so), like sound effects in a
> game or a messaging app, you probably won't be fast enough to change
> their volume while they're playing. So, you need to be able to change
> their volume even when they aren't playing.
>
> If you want to be able to do this with the hardware volume buttons,
> that means that by default (when no sound is playing), the hardware
> volume buttons should control the role that sound effects use.
>
> So, the current design is that this default role for volume controls
> should be "alert", and that sound effects should use "alert".
> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Sound#primary-output>
>
> Unfortunately, this doesn't work at the moment because the Qt
> SoundEffect API <http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-
> multimedia.html#soundeffect> produces sounds that use do not use the
> "alert" role, but rather "multimedia". Because this is not the default
> role, the hardware volume buttons control the volume of sound effects
> only during the brief moments when the sound effects are actually
> playing.
>
> I see three ways to resolve this bug:
> A. Decide that you should not, in fact, be able to change the volume of
> sound effects using the hardware buttons when sound effects aren't playing.
> B. Combine the "alert" and "multimedia" roles. That would have the
> drawback that you couldn't change sound effect volume independent of music
> that was playing in the background (but maybe that's not a big deal).
> C. Change the SoundEffect API implementation so that it uses the "alert"
> role by default.
>
> (This is a followup to bug 1478506.)
>
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