Comment 127 for bug 445849

Okay, it's pretty clear what's happening now. The volumes are being merged thanks to the configuration in /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output-speaker.conf and /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf, so a slight adjustment using gnome-media's mixer applet results in the render being "incorrect". However, from pulse's perspective, that's precisely what *should* happen, but we live in an imperfect world of imperfect (aka broken) hardware. So, let's recap:

1) There are a lot of different mixer configs here, because just about everyone reporting "me, too" has a different audio controller/codec combo. Hooray for complexity. :-(

2) We can't enable LFE remixing universally (by default) in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, because that will only work for *some* hardware. On other hardware, you'll potentially destroy it due to the physical wiring.

3) pulse doesn't yet handle the Creative LiveDrive controls properly (rather, at all; Jerther, I may need to add a separate mixer path file for this). There are a number of "Headphone XX" mirrors of the "XX" controls that need to be handled in addition to the "Wave XX" and "Sigmatel Surround" ones.

4) You *may* be able to work around this symptom by configuring one or both of the above files to have volume = ignore or volume = zero for the following elements: Rear, Surround, Side, Center, and LFE. The latter volume parameter is preferable, but I can't predict the precise results across such a dizzying array of hardware.

Thanks particularly to Jean-François Fortin Tam and Jerther for following through and for everyone's patience in helping resolve this symptom. (It's difficult to troubleshoot remotely when I don't have any such hardware locally and have heaps of real-life issues.)