Fix unmuting PulseAudio on Xfce
Unmuting doesnt work in Xfce?
I had this problem too after installing Debian Testing (Jessie) which now comes with Xfce by default, but you may encounter it on any system running Xfce DE.
Every time I muted the audio using the mute key on my keyboard, everything worked find - the audio was indeed muted. But when I tried to unmute using the same key, the audio indicator showed the unmuted state but audio was still muted.
After some investigation I understood that the only way to unmute my system was entering the command:
in the terminal and then press M to toggle the mute state.
Apparently, the Audio Mixer was muting PulseAudio AND Alsa, but unmuting ONLY Alsa.
If you run the following command, it will list all the properties under xfce4-mixer:
In my case, what I saw is only one mixer under /sound-cards/ entry. It was Alsa, PulseAudio just wasnt there.
Also, in the audio mixer I saw only the Alsa entry and couldnt even control the PulseAudio mixer as you see here:
From what I understood, xfce4-mixer (the Audio Mixer) was missing an optional dependency to be able to work with PulseAudio.
This dependency is: gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio.
After installing the above dependency, using (on debian):
the Audio Mixer looked a lot better:
But, running:
Every time I muted the audio using the mute key on my keyboard, everything worked find - the audio was indeed muted. But when I tried to unmute using the same key, the audio indicator showed the unmuted state but audio was still muted.
After some investigation I understood that the only way to unmute my system was entering the command:
1 | alsamixer |
Apparently, the Audio Mixer was muting PulseAudio AND Alsa, but unmuting ONLY Alsa.
If you run the following command, it will list all the properties under xfce4-mixer:
1 | xfconf-query -lc xfce4-mixer |
In my case, what I saw is only one mixer under /sound-cards/ entry. It was Alsa, PulseAudio just wasnt there.
Also, in the audio mixer I saw only the Alsa entry and couldnt even control the PulseAudio mixer as you see here:
From what I understood, xfce4-mixer (the Audio Mixer) was missing an optional dependency to be able to work with PulseAudio.
This dependency is: gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio.
After installing the above dependency, using (on debian):
1 | sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio |
But, running:
1 |
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