Whenever, I open Firefox to play media with an embedded player, which is unable to control the volume, the volume level will be set to roughly 85-90%, which is pretty noisy on my sound system. While other players, like Rhythmbox or embedded players able to set the volume (e.g. YouTube), will remain at the setting it was set up, sound from those other non-controllable players (e.g. on Bandcamp) jump right back to the heightened level as soon as
- one mutes the tab, then unmutes it, or
- changes the sound file (either manually or when the player ended the previous sound file and opens the next).
That being said: I can change the application sound to the level I would like to have it. However, I need to do this every time the above criteria is being met.
Is there a way to make PulseAudio, Firefox or whatever else is responsible to tune it down and remember that level for this application?
A workaround would be to lower the system-wide sound, which is already at 50% even further. However, other sound, including YouTube would then be pretty low as well, which is undesirable.
At first I thought that even Rhythmbox was affected, but this was due to a GNOME extension (Mpris Indicator Button), which I disabled. Though it leads me to believe that this is not simply a Firefox issue, but (potentially) stemming from PulseAudio when not getting any initial volume level request from a player.
While I do not have a current comparison, I cannot recall it being so annoying in the past. So, something must have changed within Fedora 32, PulseAudio and/or GNOME or while less likely, maybe even Firefox.
Is this a bug or can the “default” application volume be set up somewhere I was not looking?