dhewm
Sound volume on 1.5.1_RC2
I just upgraded dhewm3 from1.5.0 to 1.5.1_RC2 on my Arch Linux system. While the 1.5.0 was quite quiet already, on 1.5.1_RC2 the sound volume was so low as being nearly inaudible. Because I have a dual-head system, I opened pavucontrol on the secondary screen and started dhewm3. There I noticed that the playback level on dhewm3 audio stream was for some reason set to 60% by default (And I definitely have not set it myself!!!). But, because dhewm3 grabs the mouse, I couldn't re-set the volume normally; I had to SSH in from my laptop and set the volume via a ncurses pulsemixer to 100%.
But still, dhewm3 maximum sound volume is very low, much more silent than on my other games, for example. I had to set the system volume to 120-130% before launching dhewm3 to set the volume about the same level as in other games. I remember the original Doom3 being much louder... (different machine, though). The in-game audio slider is set to max, and there's no difference in volume whether eax is on or not.
If you open the console (Shift+Esc) the mouse gets ungrabbed, and shortcuts like Alt-Tab should work even without opening the console.
In my experience pulseaudios per-application volume is a broken mess; I'm not sure if that's specific to the pulse plugin for the XFCE panel (which also handles keyboard shortcuts for setting the volume) or a general problem, but on my system changing the global volume (either with the volume controls of my keyboard or by using the mousewheel on the volume icon on the panel) changes both the default output devices volume and the volume of all active playback sources. It also seems to remember the configured volume when restarting applications.
If it's the same on your system that could explain why dhewm3 has a different volume in pulse than other applications.
Oh, also, yes, dhewm3 is less loud than Doom3 used to be, to work around a sound issues with lots of loud sounds (like shooting the shotgun against a nearby metal wall), see #179
No, I only use pavucontrol app to adjust volume, it does not behave like you described. And it still does not change the fact that dhewm3 has way too low maximum audio volume. I should probably mention that I use Awesome wm (no DE's) and output the audio via GTX1070 HDMI/DisplayPort to my display's loudspeakers.
(sigh) Well damn, maybe I should make a script which raises the volume before launching dhewm3, and resets it back when dhewm3 closes...
Then I have no idea where the 60% are coming from, dhewm3 shouldn't change system volume settings.
You can also set s_volume_dB in the console to values bigger than 0 (try 5 or 10) to make the game louder - but keep in mind that this could cause sound bugs like described in #179.
(When setting the slider in the settings menu to max it's 0, this allows you to go higher)