I just got Ubuntu 10.10 a few days ago on a new desktop and for the first few days the volume worked as expected. However, now the master volume seems to impact nothing. When I am playing Rhythmbox, for example, I have to open up the sound preferences in order to change the sound for an individual application.
Is there any way to get the master volume setting back to where it was, able to control all the applications instead of them ignoring it?
Perhaps you have more than one audio device? It isn't uncommon for the VGA to have HDMI audio output, for instance and I have experienced situations where the master volume control is set to control another device.
In the preferences dialog, there is a page called Output. If the correct device is selected, try to select another one and then back to the one you want to use and see if that helps.
I have tried that, with every possible permutation of options, eventually I just updated to 11.04 and now the problem is gone, so I can only assume that I had a bad update.
