Not always playing 'volume-adjust' sound effect can be a poor user experience
I'm on Arch Linux with gnome 3.36
In 3.36, the volume adjustment sound effect is not played if audio is already playing. Although this is buggy (#508 (closed)), even when working as intended, it is a poor user experience in some cases.
Here's the example:
I was just waiting for a live stream to begin, and wanted to make sure that my volume was appropriately set so that I would hear the live stream start. The video stream was playing, but was just a placeholder graphic with no audio - but this silence counted as audio playing as far as gnome-settings-daemon is concerned, so the volume-adjust sound effect was not played.
Unfortunately, without checking cables and switches, this situation is indistinguishable from my speakers being off or unplugged. Without checking PulseAudio settings, it's not distinguishable from my audio being directed to a pair of headphones I have plugged in rather than the USB speakers, or being directed to HMDI (my monitors don't have speakers, but nonetheless appear as HDMI PulseAudio sinks, occasionally being selected by accident). Even if I checked all that, there's no test that will prove I've done it right other than playing some audio. And there's no way to confirm the volume level is appropriate (The speakers have their own volume knob too, so the computer setting is not the only thing determining the level).
The volume sound effect provides a very useful signal that yes, my speakers are on and configured correctly, and it's just the case that the live stream is silent. And if the volume is too loud, testing with the volume-adjust sound is better and safer (in the case that the volume is set too high) than playing some other audio to test things, since the sound effect is brief.
I think the feature should be reverted to provide a more consistent experience that won't leave users guessing about what their hardware is doing in the case of quiet or silent audio streams.