Volume controls: too complicated for a simple user

[Andre Tann]

Hi all,

I'm running Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS with KDE.

Right beside the clock, I have a speaker symbol, and I can leftclick on 
it, or rightclick, then chose set up audio devices.

Whichever I chose, I find loads of complicated and contradictory (in my 
eyes) options and settings. Sometimes I have to play around with these 
for minutes until I can hear something coming out of my laptop's speaker.

Sometimes I tried to middle click on the speaker symbol in order to 
completely mute everything. But while it shows a crossed symbol, 
sometimes I still have sound from some applications. So the mute logic 
does not work for all sources or for all sinks. And I cannot understand 
how all this works together.

Or sometimes I turn up the volume to the maximum by using the mouse 
wheel over the speaker symbol, and I see the slider is at 150%, but 
still the music is playing very quiet. So I have to find another slider 
to turn up the volume.


My questions are:

- can anyone recommend a page that explains how to understand all these 
settings and how they work together

- is there a simple tool where I can say

    Application X => laptop speaker

- is there a simple tool that lets me control the overall volume, and 
not many volume controls for many audio sinks and many applications


Appreciate any help :)


-- 
Andre Tann