[LAU] How to prevent applications from changing my mic level?

[hollundertee at gmx.net]

On Wed, 6 May 2020 06:19:52 -0700 (MST)
"S." <sb56637 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jacek Konieczny wrote
>  [...]
>  [...]
>
> Ah OK, that makes sense.
>
>  [...]
>
> So it looks like the core of the problem is that the only way to
> disable PulseAudio's direct hardware access is via /usr/share/ . I
> wonder if I could submit a bug/feature request for PulseAudio to
> optionally pull its profiles from /etc/pulse/ ?
>
>  [...]
>
> This would be ideal. Any tips on how to do that?

This has been Pulse Audio behaviour for ages and seems to be directly
inspired by OSX, like most things these people do.
Years ago, when I tried to use Jitsi to stay in touch with someone,
this "feature" already caused me endless frustration as it made Jitsi
nigh unusable.

There may be a config option somewhere to prevent this. I think I
eventually found one that at least prevented PA to enable the extremely
noise inducing "mic boost" on the intel interface, but it may have been
a more general option. Of course that was not considered a bug in PA
but one in the ALSA drivers, following the motto that bugs are always
someone else's bugs. And yes, we lost contact, which frustrates me
until today.

I think this is the option that helped me. This is not the general PA
page on the Arch wiki, just the dedicated troubleshooting page.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting#Volume_gets_louder_every_time_a_new_application_is_started

Regards,
Philipp