I have recently started to watch BBC iplayer on my computer
for selected programmes such as SAS Rogue Heroes.

Eveery time I get it up on Firefox, the volume is too low.

When I bring up Pulseaudio I hsave to drag the slider to 153%
I would like to fix it.

Is there any fix?

TIA

--
Linux Mint 22.1 kernel version 6.8.0-84-generic Cinnamon 6.4.8
AMD Ryzen 7 7700, Radeon RX 6600, 32GB DDR5, 2TB SSD, 2TB Barracuda

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 22:28:27 +0100, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I have recently started to watch BBC iplayer on my computer
for selected programmes such as SAS Rogue Heroes.

Eveery time I get it up on Firefox, the volume is too low.

When I bring up Pulseaudio I hsave to drag the slider to 153%
I would like to fix it.

Is there any fix?

TIA

A safe first step is to check what PulseAudio thinks Firefox's application volume is while iPlayer is actually playing.

Open Sound Settings, or run pavucontrol if you have it installed:

sudo apt install pavucontrol
pavucontrol

Then look on the Playback tab while the programme is playing. Firefox should appear as a playback stream. Set that stream to 100%, and also check that it is
using the expected output device.

If PulseAudio has remembered a silly per-application volume for Firefox, you can
reset the saved stream volumes by closing Firefox and running:

rm ~/.config/pulse/*stream-volumes.tdb
pulseaudio -k

Then start Firefox again and try iPlayer. Mint may restart PulseAudio for you; if not, log out and back in.

If only BBC iPlayer is quiet and other Firefox sites are normal, the other workaround is Firefox's about:config setting:

media.volume_scale

The default is 1.0. Setting it to something like 1.5 boosts HTML5 media in Firefox, but that affects all Firefox media, so I would try the PulseAudio reset
first.

--
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null>
"I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Tue, 6/2/2026 5:28 PM, pinnerite wrote:

I have recently started to watch BBC iplayer on my computer
for selected programmes such as SAS Rogue Heroes.

Eveery time I get it up on Firefox, the volume is too low.

When I bring up Pulseaudio I hsave to drag the slider to 153%
I would like to fix it.

Is there any fix?

TIA

This can be a packaging problem, when software used for
preparing Hollywood titles is used for production work.
I don't know the exact level, but it might be -15 dB.
This leaves lots of room so there is no "overload" on
the audio channel -- but for as long as this has existed,
no customer using the crappy stuff has been particularly happy
with this choice-point. (I've had complaints back home
about not being able to set telly loud enough to fix it.)
When an advert cuts in, the volume must be adjusted, once again.

On the computer end, it is possible to pass a title
directly to a hardware decoder, leaving little chance
for volume controls to work. For example, if the soundtrack
had AC3, and you sent the audio signal over SPDIF to your
receiver, the volume is not adjustable until the AC3 is
decoded... on the receiver. The receiver volume
control, is the control to use. It's when the player
decodes the audio within the computing box, you get
a chance to adjust something at the PC level.

*******

In a quick Google, apparently some digital TV sets
have an "auto volume" feature. But the comment did not
mention whether an HDMI input fares the same way as
a broadcast reception channel (which is also digital).
Presumably like all software features, there is a
gotcha in there somewhere.

*******

Only if absolutely every bit of audio content, passed
through a single path in the PC, could we have
guaranteed control of something. You cannot for example,
decode AC3, adjust the volume, re-encode AC3 and
pass it over SPDIF to a receiver. To do so, costs
a latency of 500msec to do that with a CPU. An attempt
was made, to add a DSP to a chipset (I have one of these),
where the AC3 encode takes 50msec, and while that is not
perfect, that gets the latency down a bit. It would have
to be below 30msec to be usable. While you can adjust the
delay between video stream and audio stream to fix that,
it's still a pretty fraught situation, to start buggering
around with lip sync. Nobody wins when you do that.
You're constantly adjusting stuff.

If you could yt-dlp the content, you could work on this,
adjust levels in your video editor, put it in the can
and play it from your streaming server. But what
are the odds that the BBC DRM will allow this, or that
a way exists to crack it your own self.

While I have volume-up and volume-down buttons on my multimedia
keyboard, there's no guarantee those have to work in all situations.
That at least, reduces the time to get a response. But to go
from 11 down to 0 using the rubber buttons, could take 2 seconds,
so it doesn't respond fast enough for practical purposes.

Summary: TV set "auto-volume" selector or hit-the-road-Jack.

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:33:08 GMT
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 22:28:27 +0100, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

I have recently started to watch BBC iplayer on my computer
for selected programmes such as SAS Rogue Heroes.

Eveery time I get it up on Firefox, the volume is too low.

When I bring up Pulseaudio I hsave to drag the slider to 153%
I would like to fix it.

Is there any fix?

TIA

A safe first step is to check what PulseAudio thinks Firefox's application volume is while iPlayer is actually playing.

Open Sound Settings, or run pavucontrol if you have it installed:

sudo apt install pavucontrol
pavucontrol

Then look on the Playback tab while the programme is playing. Firefox should appear as a playback stream. Set that stream to 100%, and also check that it is
using the expected output device.

If PulseAudio has remembered a silly per-application volume for Firefox, you can
reset the saved stream volumes by closing Firefox and running:

rm ~/.config/pulse/*stream-volumes.tdb

No such file or directory. Just /home/alan/.config/pulse/cookie

pulseaudio -k

Then start Firefox again and try iPlayer. Mint may restart PulseAudio for you;
if not, log out and back in.

If only BBC iPlayer is quiet and other Firefox sites are normal, the other workaround is Firefox's about:config setting:

media.volume_scale

The default is 1.0. Setting it to something like 1.5 boosts HTML5 media in Firefox, but that affects all Firefox media, so I would try the PulseAudio reset
first.

--
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null>
"I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."

--
Linux Mint 22.1 kernel version 6.8.0-84-generic Cinnamon 6.4.8
AMD Ryzen 7 7700, Radeon RX 6600, 32GB DDR5, 2TB SSD, 2TB Barracuda

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 3 Jun 2026 22:24:02 +0100, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:33:08 GMT
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 22:28:27 +0100, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote: >> >
I have recently started to watch BBC iplayer on my computer
for selected programmes such as SAS Rogue Heroes.

Eveery time I get it up on Firefox, the volume is too low.

When I bring up Pulseaudio I hsave to drag the slider to 153%
I would like to fix it.

Is there any fix?

TIA

A safe first step is to check what PulseAudio thinks Firefox's application >> volume is while iPlayer is actually playing.

Open Sound Settings, or run pavucontrol if you have it installed:

sudo apt install pavucontrol
pavucontrol

Then look on the Playback tab while the programme is playing. Firefox should
appear as a playback stream. Set that stream to 100%, and also check that it
is
using the expected output device.

If PulseAudio has remembered a silly per-application volume for Firefox, you >> can
reset the saved stream volumes by closing Firefox and running:

rm ~/.config/pulse/*stream-volumes.tdb

No such file or directory. Just /home/alan/.config/pulse/cookie

pulseaudio -k

Then start Firefox again and try iPlayer. Mint may restart PulseAudio for >> you;
if not, log out and back in.

If only BBC iPlayer is quiet and other Firefox sites are normal, the other >> workaround is Firefox's about:config setting:

media.volume_scale

The default is 1.0. Setting it to something like 1.5 boosts HTML5 media in >> Firefox, but that affects all Firefox media, so I would try the PulseAudio >> reset
first.

--
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null>
"I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."

That just means PulseAudio has no saved per-application stream volume to remove,
so there was nothing to reset in that directory. The cookie file is normal; leave it alone.

In that case I would try the Firefox setting next. In Firefox, open:

about:config

Search for:

media.volume_scale

If it does not already exist, create it as a string. Try 1.5 first, then restart the iPlayer tab. If it is still too quiet, try 2.0. This affects all HTML5 media in Firefox, so set it back to 1.0 if YouTube or other sites become too loud.

Also check pavucontrol while iPlayer is actually playing, not before. The Playback tab only shows the Firefox stream while sound is coming from the page.

--
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null>
"I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:12:58 GMT
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> wrote:

On Wed, 3 Jun 2026 22:24:02 +0100, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote: >On Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:33:08 GMT
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null> wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jun 2026 22:28:27 +0100, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote: >> >
I have recently started to watch BBC iplayer on my computer
for selected programmes such as SAS Rogue Heroes.

Eveery time I get it up on Firefox, the volume is too low.

When I bring up Pulseaudio I hsave to drag the slider to 153%
I would like to fix it.

Is there any fix?

TIA

A safe first step is to check what PulseAudio thinks Firefox's application >> volume is while iPlayer is actually playing.

Open Sound Settings, or run pavucontrol if you have it installed:

sudo apt install pavucontrol
pavucontrol

Then look on the Playback tab while the programme is playing. Firefox should
appear as a playback stream. Set that stream to 100%, and also check that it
is
using the expected output device.

If PulseAudio has remembered a silly per-application volume for Firefox, you
can
reset the saved stream volumes by closing Firefox and running:

rm ~/.config/pulse/*stream-volumes.tdb

No such file or directory. Just /home/alan/.config/pulse/cookie

pulseaudio -k

Then start Firefox again and try iPlayer. Mint may restart PulseAudio for >> you;
if not, log out and back in.

If only BBC iPlayer is quiet and other Firefox sites are normal, the other >> workaround is Firefox's about:config setting:

media.volume_scale

The default is 1.0. Setting it to something like 1.5 boosts HTML5 media in
Firefox, but that affects all Firefox media, so I would try the PulseAudio >> reset
first.

--
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null>
"I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."

That just means PulseAudio has no saved per-application stream volume to remove,
so there was nothing to reset in that directory. The cookie file is normal; leave it alone.

In that case I would try the Firefox setting next. In Firefox, open:

about:config

Search for:

media.volume_scale

If it does not already exist, create it as a string. Try 1.5 first, then restart the iPlayer tab. If it is still too quiet, try 2.0. This affects all
HTML5 media in Firefox, so set it back to 1.0 if YouTube or other sites become
too loud.

Also check pavucontrol while iPlayer is actually playing, not before. The Playback tab only shows the Firefox stream while sound is coming from the page.

--
TheLastSysop <thelastsysop@dev.null>
"I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."

The about:config suggestion workerd perfecly at 2.0.
Thank you
Alan




--
Linux Mint 22.1 kernel version 6.8.0-84-generic Cinnamon 6.4.8
AMD Ryzen 7 7700, Radeon RX 6600, 32GB DDR5, 2TB SSD, 2TB Barracuda

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)