Set default pulseaudio volume

Solution 1:

Set the volume to your desired level and then type in a terminal:

sudo alsactl store

Now, it should be stored even after reboot.

Solution 2:

With PulseAudio 8.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 and a single sound card, you can set the default master volume to 50% with the following file. By including the system default you don't have to worry about changes in the distribution's defaults.

$ cat ~/.config/pulse/default.pa
.include /etc/pulse/default.pa

# Set volume to 50% on boot
set-sink-volume 0 32768

If you have multiple cards, replace the index number with the name since order is not guaranteed. In addition, if you want to adjust the volume determine the "base volume" which represents the max and calculate the equivalent percentage.

$ pacmd list-sinks | grep -e "name:" -e "index:" -e "base volume:"
  * index: 0
    name: <alsa_output.card0>
    base volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
  * index: 1
    name: <alsa_output.card1>
    base volume: 32768 / 100% / 0.00 dB

For example, to specify the default volume of 70% for card1 the line would become:

set-sink-volume alsa_output.card1 22937

Solution 3:

What worked for me was to go into /home/(user)/.config/pulse/default.pa and scroll to the bottom to set-sink-volume and change the value to 0