[Question]: Mute all channels when starting X11

[atreyasha]

Hello, thank you for developing alsa-utils. I have a specific question pertaining to amixer.

Current behaviour

When starting X11 and i3 (my window manager), I would like to have all audio channels (speaker, headphones, etc.) muted. At the moment, I have the following command in my i3 configuration file:

amixer -q sset Master mute

And as expected, the Master channel is indeed muted after starting X11. However, when I connect or disconnect my headphones, the volume automatically reverts back to the volume that was saved during the last boot.

Expected behaviour

I would like all volume channels to stay muted. So for example after starting X11 and i3, I would like to see that both my speakers and headphones are muted, even when I plug/unplug the jack. Would you have any recommendations on how to do this?

I was considering manually muting both headphones and speakers with amixer and then re-using the alsa state file during boots. But I am unsure because this seems like a hack'ish solution.

System specifications

OS/Kernel: Arch Linux, 5.9.8-arch1-1, x86_64 GNU/Linux
alsa-utils: 1.2.4-2 (installed via pacman package manager)
wm: i3-gaps

[atreyasha]

My bad, this issue is related to pulseaudio and not alsa. In case anyone is stuck on a similar issue, following is my local fix. I made ~/.config/pulse/default.pa with the following:

.include /etc/pulse/default.pa

### unload module for device restoration
.ifexists module-device-restore.so
  unload-module module-device-restore
.endif

Afterwards, restart pulseaudio:

$ systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

This basically loads the default default.pa recommended by pulseaudio and then unloads the module-device-restore module. This is the module which causes reversions in volumes upon port changes. By unloading this module, my system now only uses a single master volume for all ports, thereby allowing me to mute everything at boot.

With that, will close this issue.