Default option for volume hotkeys (speakers/headphones)

[Aaron Whitehouse]

Hi all,

I am using Gutsy Tribe 5 and maintain one of the LaptopTesting pages.
As such, I plugged in my headphones and tested the volume hotkeys.
Nothing happens. The bug report is here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/63544
and is marked as invalid.

The reason that it is marked invalid is that there is no consensus on
how it should be fixed.

The default at the moment, as I understand things, is that the volume
hotkeys control the "Master" setting. This controls the speakers but
not the headphones (despite the name). As I see it, there are at least
three options:
1) Change the hotkeys to control both "Master" and "Headphones". This
can manually be achieved by going into the preferences and
Ctrl-clicking.
2) Change the hotkeys to control "PCM" (I understand that this would
mean that the volume of sound from some applications would not be able
to be altered)
3) Cleverly determine whether headphones are plugged in. If they are,
make the hotkeys control "Headphones" and if they are not, control
"Master".

We are all aiming for an intuitive, user-friendly distribution. It is
my personal opinion that, when somebody has headphones in and presses
the volume hotkeys, they would expect the sound that they are hearing
to change volume. One can always change the default in the
preferences, but the default should make sense.

What are the opinions of others on this? I would have thought that 1
was a better solution than we currently have, although it may not be
the best.

Regards,

Aaron