Running pulseaudio-ctl show the following output:

(standard_in) 1: syntax error
(standard_in) 1: syntax error
(standard_in) 1: syntax error
Cannot determine which version of pactl is installed. Aborting.

This happened after upgrading pulseaudio (13.0-3 -> 13.99.2+7+g6101798c7-1)

uname -a: Linux Arch 5.8.13-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu, 01 Oct 2020 20:40:35 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Hello, every time I try to run pulseaudio-ctrl I get some variation of the output below.
Is this a mistake I am making or a problem with the code?

(precise)onhoplus@localhost:~/.config/pulseaudio-ctl$ /usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl mute
awk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (missing operand)

• index:
  awk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (missing operand)
• index:
  Assertion 'o' failed at pulse/operation.c:67, function pa_operation_unref(). Aborting.
  /usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl: line 97: 29301 Aborted (core dumped) pactl set-sink-mute "$SINK" toggle
  (precise)jacob@localhost:~/.config/pulseaudio-ctl$ /usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl up
  awk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (missing operand)
• index:
  awk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (missing operand)
• index:
  Assertion 'o' failed at pulse/operation.c:67, function pa_operation_unref(). Aborting.
  /usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl: line 97: 29414 Aborted (core dumped) pactl set-sink-volume "$SINK" -- +5%

$ pulseaudio-ctl down

awk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (missing operand)

• index:
  Assertion 'o' failed at pulse/operation.c:67, function pa_operation_unref(). Aborting.
  /usr/local/bin/pulseaudio-ctl: line 50: 5357 Aborted (core dumped) pactl set-sink-volume "$SINK" -- -5%

It's rather often when I face issues with movies with quiter sound on my laptop, so I need to use that sound boost' that PulseAudio offering me with volume up to 150%. Naturally as a user of that script of yours I'd like to do so without help of pavucontrol tool and leaving my video player for a bit. On rarer occasions I need that functionality in other cases. So I propose to allow that. Also I understand that my proposition can be unwanted beaviour for others, so I additionaly suggest to add some sort of param and/or config for that either with global shell variable f.e. PULSE_AUDIO_CTL_ALLOW_VOLUME_ABOVE_100=1, or through config with shell variables which will be sourced if exists from user's home directory at every script envocation. Although we can make it more generic and add param like PULSE_AUDIO_CTL_UPPER_THRESHOLD=100` and compare current volume level with threshold instead of 100 or 150 or not comparing it at all.

I can offer my assistece and prepare pull request with those changes after we discuss that matter here - in this issue, with aim to choose implementation and naming methods.

trying to use pulseaudio-ctl up on archlinux, am faced with the error

Getting this when trying to run volume commands like pulseaudio-ctl up

On Arch Linux, withpulseaudio and libpulse version 11.0+6+g01f489c3

Decrease volume doesn't work because CURVOL is always empty string. Relevant output below. (No 'front' or 'base volume' strings, pacmd 2.0)

pacmd list-sinks|grep -A 15 '* index'

• index: 1
  volume: 0: 55% 1: 55%
  0: -15.58 dB 1: -15.58 dB
  balance 0.00
  base volume: 100%
  0.00 dB

A workaround for inability to lower volume is to comment out
[[ "$CURVOL" -le 0 ]] && (echo 'wha..' ; exit 0) || in pulseaudio-ctl

It seems like the notification messages text are hardcoded in the script. It would be nice to be able to customize them (e.g.: via the config file)

When installed using the likes of PREFIX=/usr/local make install pulseaudio-ctl still attempts to load configuration from usr/share/pulseaudio-ctl/config.skel, resulting in a broken installation.

console output

/usr/share/pulseaudio-ctl/config.skel is missing. Reinstall this package to continue.

Pulseaudio is configured to start automatically when it's needed, which makes superflous to configure my WM to start it at login. The problem is that Pulseaudio-ctl doesn't start Pulseaudio automatically when it's not running, which means that I won't be able to change the volume until I've started an application that outputs audio. Is this intended?

When UPPER_THRESHOLD is set to a level higher than 100, the bar reported still relies con $CURVOL instead of recalculating the new percentage.

This is I believe the expected behavior, as can be seen on something like KMixer.

Greetings,

my use case is to play an alert sound from a cron entry. For that I want to set the output level at its maximum, so that the sound may be heared from another room. But once the sound has been played, I want to set the level back to its prior level.

Would it be possible to have a function to retrieve the current sound level value so that it can be stored for later use in a script ?

Thank you so much for this nice program.

On first start it tried to determine the version of pusleaudio but couldn't because bc wasn't installed. Please make bc a dependency.

So on fresh install of Debian (nothing fancy, I just installed Debian testing on a vm and added PulseAudio Volume Control) I am getting the following error twice running pulseaudio-ctl:
[awk: line 1: regular expression compile failed (missing operand)

• index:
  ]

If I open up the script and change all instances (there are 4) of [/* index] to [/*index] the error is resolved, I am surprised this isn't an issue on other systems. I guess it might be the version of some software I am using, but I have always escaped special characters like * when I am writing regular expressions.

Other than that, excellent script thanks for your work!

Hi!
Would it be possible to add a new option called set-input?
It does what it says. Set volume for default source, just like set does for sink.
It would be cool if we had also up-input and down-input, but I'm not sure how useful that would be

Title says it all. I'd love to try this but I can't derive any meaning from a sentence like
"Setup the via a make." With all respect and appreciation, I diffidently point out, that's not English. Can anybody point me to clear instructions?

Hi, thanks for useful script. Equalizer sink outputs volume for front left with trailing comma

        active port: <analog-output-headphones>
  * index: 1
        name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.equalizer>
        driver: <module-equalizer-sink.c>
        flags: HW_MUTE_CTRL LATENCY DYNAMIC_LATENCY
        state: RUNNING
        suspend cause: 
        priority: 1000
        volume: front-left: 54394 /  83%,   front-right: 54394 /  83%
                balance 0.00
        base volume: 65536 / 100%
        volume steps: 65537
        muted: no

in result

 $  /usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl up
Cannot determine current volume.
/usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl: line 110: 5 + 83, : syntax error: operand expected (error token is ", ")

I removed equalizer as a workaround :) To reproduce load pulseaudio equalizer https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#Equalizer

I just noticed that when I have headphones in that pulseaudio-ctl only operates on the built-in sink even though I have selected the headphones as the output source.

% pacmd list-sinks
2 sink(s) available.
index: 0
    name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>
    ...
    state: IDLE
    ...

index: 1
    name: <alsa_output.usb-0d8c_C-Media_USB_Audio_Device-00-Device.analog-stereo>
    ...
    state: RUNNING
    ...

So in my case, only the first sink is changed while the currently running second sink is left unaffected.

Perhaps the state: RUNNING versus state: IDLE could be the solution?

Pipewire is the new Pulseaudio replacement, it's almost backwards-compatible, but pacmd doesn't exist.

The script only uses pacmd for list-sinks/list-sources, which according to https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/Migrate-PulseAudio#pacmd, can be replaced with some manipulation on top of pw-cli ls Node.

First of all - great work!

Existing pulse audio control utilities are very complex and yet not versatile at all. For example, you have to use some awk magic to know if the device is muted. Your software is way more convenient.

When I was searching for something which would help me to control volume I was looking for a console utility that helps me to control all my volume sinks at once. For example, when I attach HDMI, or Bluetooth headphones and press the volume down button, I want to decrease volume everywhere. The same with mute and everything. But I couldn't find any way to control my audio this way. Your is the most convenient, but (afaik) can't do it either.

Do you think you can implement "global" volume control? Not only for the default sink. I think it would mean running your script on all sinks discovered. And maybe adding a new config line to tune this behavior.

I read a couple of other issues in the project, seems like you have no time. I guess working on other open-source projects, thank you one more time. But maybe you gonna find time to do it. Or, maybe someone else will consider it to be simple enough to do it theyself.

Anyway, I just wanted to ping you to check if you are able to approve and merge a pull request with this feature if there gone be one.

Thank you for your time!

/usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl mute does a great job of muting the volume. However typing the same command again doesn't seem to unmute the volume. Nor do the volume up or volume down commands.
I can re-enable sound by going into the pulseaudio gui clicking the output devices tab and unmuting there.

With the Plasma 5.21 update, seems like something changed on the dbus call needed for displaying the volume OSD element.

Currently this seems to be the call pulseaudio-ctl uses for showing that element:

This currently throws an error with Plasma 5.21:

Error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject: No such object path '/org/kde/osdService'

I was able to make the OSD appear again altering the line to:

dbus-send --session --dest="org.kde.plasmashell" --type="method_call" "/org/kde/osdService" "org.kde.osdService.volumeChanged" "int32:$1"

I just started using pulseaudio-ctl, so I have never seen how was the OSD element shown before, but with this change, if I make "$1" a value over 100, it just shows the OSD as if my volume is 100%, which doesn't seem right.
It may be how it worked before too, I don't know.

Hello,
I'm using pulseaudio-ctl with a 5.1 audio configuration, but when I'm increasing or decreasing the volume, it doesn't respect the ratio I have setup for each channel.

For example:

• front: 75%
• rear: 100%

Decreasing the volume of 40% will result to:

• front: 35%
• rear: 60%

So the ratio is not respected.
Also, there is another issue: max volume is configured to be 100%, but again, it doesn't respect the ratio if I keep increasing the volume. Every channels will be set to 100% instead of stopping when only one of the channels reaches 100%.

Thanks !

As per #31 (comment):

It would be nice to be able to customize the desktop notification priority, too. It seems to me these notifications should be urgency_low out of the box, given the notification is likely to be a direct feedback to an action from the user.

I do not know other ways to communicate here, but through issues and pull requests. I do not add PR because of incomplete implementation. So here it goes Philosoft@cb00d83 please look into it. I do not know what script expects to be in SINK and SOURCE I do understand what lies in CURVOL, but I tired and sleepy to do proper checks and catch unexoected cases (CURVOL not an integer) so i leave it to you or my future self.

For some time now pulseaudio-ctl has been giving off this error:

Invalid volume specification

This is because it uses this command to change the volume:

pactl set-sink-volume 0 -- (volume)%

This is wrong with newer versions of pactl, the -- have to be removed and everything works fine.

So, I installed this today, and the first use muted my default sink.

I'm writing this mainly for anyone using the same versions I am, and wondering what to do to get their audio back. I don't expect that it would be worth patching pulseaudio-ctl to fix this, and I don't have a machine with other versions to test on in any case.

Step 1:

 $ pacmd list-sinks|grep '* index'
 * index: 1   # yours might differ, I guess?  Anyway, use the same number below before " false"
 $ pacmd
 Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information.
 >>> set-sink-mute 1 false

You should have audio now. Press Ctrl+d to exit pacmd.

Step 2:

If this worked for you, then fixing pulseaudio-ctl is simple.

First make sure that the problem I had is really the problem you had:

 $ grep 'volume: front' /usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl

You should have five lines of output that contain "... CURVOL ...". If so:

 $ sudo sed -i -e 's/volume: front/volume: 0/g' /usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl