How do I use the volume indicator without installing Pulseaudio?

Question

I had to remove pulseaudio as I need to use two different audio cards with Skype (a headphone is connected to one of them for use for phone calls while speakers for general usage are connected to the other audio card). Now, Skype works with ALSA and everything is fine. Except the fact I do no longer have a mixer tray icon. I installed alsa-tray with no effect.

Could you please tell me if there a way for:

1. Recover the volume icon in the tray without reinstalling pulseaudio

Answer 1

You cannot use the sound indicator without pulseaudio as it depends on pulseaudio. Also on a separate note, I believe it may be possible to have a multicard setup in pulseaudio, but I've never done this myself so I cannot be 100% sure (maybe someone else can tell you how).

As for alsa-tray, you need to whitelist that application in your system tray (if you are using Unity).

See:

• How do I access and enable more icons to be in the system tray?
• How to know the name of the systray applications in order to add it one by one on the systray-whitelist?