New Snapclients are at 100% volume at first connect

[nis65]

I have not investigated yet if there is any possibility via command line / configuration files to set the initial volume to a certain level. I agree that for new setups it is easier to search for something to lower the volume than to start erratic debuging just to find out two hours later that it was just one (of the many) volume settings along the audio path set to 0...

But when you have a working setup and add a device (by simply adding a hostname to your inventory and running the playbook again) or rename the snapclient device name (add/edit some ansible variables...) it can get quite loud during the ansible run: At the moment the snapclient picks up the connection and starts to play music for the first time, you have 100% volume. Depending on what equipment you have connected (e.g. a hifiberry amp board with connected speakers), the only chance you have is to stop all inputs...

[nis65]

badaix/snapcast#910

Feature Request in snapcast project

[nis65]

Possible solutions:

• ansible: additional workaround role that turns the hardware alsa volume down. After first deployment, the user would have to do two things:
  • lower the snapclient volume in snapweb
  • login to the raspi and manually raise the alsa hardware volume back to the desired level. This might be needed anyway as you might not want a certain amp/speaker pair to operate over a certain volume.
• snapcast: edit/recompile snapclient (and/or snapserver) to support a configurable initial volume (i.e. implement feature request linked in previous comment).

[nis65]

Success. The following diff against current master [v 0.26] solves the problem for me. I have now an additional parameter in /etc/snapclient.conf:

[server]
...
defaultvolume=21

And this is the volume in percent a brand new snapclient gets assigned on initial connect (i.e. the snapclient is not known to /var/lib/snapserver/server.json yet). If this parameter is not set, the volume assigned on initial connect will be 100 as before.

[nis65]

diff --git a/server/server.cpp b/server/server.cpp
index e1450f84..b6f3f61e 100644
--- a/server/server.cpp
+++ b/server/server.cpp
@@ -770,6 +770,11 @@ void Server::onMessageReceived(StreamSession* streamSession, const msg::BaseMess
         }
 
         ClientInfoPtr client = group->getClient(streamSession->clientId);
+        if (newGroup)
+        {
+             // override default volume set from constructor
+             client->config.volume.percent = settings_.server.default_volume;
+        }
 
         LOG(DEBUG, LOG_TAG) << "Sending ServerSettings to " << streamSession->clientId << "\n";
         auto serverSettings = make_shared<msg::ServerSettings>();
diff --git a/server/server_settings.hpp b/server/server_settings.hpp
index 31d87982..7ce7aea9 100644
--- a/server/server_settings.hpp
+++ b/server/server_settings.hpp
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ struct ServerSettings
         std::string user{"snapserver"};
         std::string group{""};
         std::string data_dir{""};
+        int default_volume{100};
     };
 
     struct Http
diff --git a/server/snapserver.cpp b/server/snapserver.cpp
index 4fd94c64..6271ea06 100644
--- a/server/snapserver.cpp
+++ b/server/snapserver.cpp
@@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ int main(int argc, char* argv[])
         conf.add<Value<string>>("", "server.user", "the user to run as when daemonized", settings.server.user, &settings.server.user);
         conf.add<Implicit<string>>("", "server.group", "the group to run as when daemonized", settings.server.group, &settings.server.group);
         conf.add<Implicit<string>>("", "server.datadir", "directory where persistent data is stored", settings.server.data_dir, &settings.server.data_dir);
+        conf.add<Value<int>>("","server.defaultvolume", "default volume for new snapclients", settings.server.default_volume, &settings.server.default_volume);
 
         // HTTP RPC settings
         conf.add<Value<bool>>("", "http.enabled", "enable HTTP Json RPC (HTTP POST and websockets)", settings.http.enabled, &settings.http.enabled);

[nis65]

Moved setting from server to streaming_client.initial_volume, added docu and created PR:

badaix/snapcast#1024

[nis65]

PR has been merged in snapcast to develop and will be in next release there.

I'll expand the current snapserver role to support the new parameter in snapserver.conf. This will be backwards compatible, as unknown config entries are simply ignored by snapserver.

[nis65]

And it's released in v0.27.0 🎉