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pavucontrol's volume meters (vumeters) should be vertical to save space and avoid confusion with the sliders

This is what we have:

pavucontrol_stream_vumeter_-_actual

...which clearly annoys some people if you bothered to put a "[x] Show volume meters" checkbox in the "Configuration" tab. Heck, it annoys me because it uses a significant amount of vertical space when you have many streams, and yet I can't deactivate the volume meters because I depend on them to know "where the heck my sound currently is misdirected".

This is what I'd propose instead:

pavucontrol_stream_vumeter_-_proposed

The vertical inverted progressbar layout solves all the problems in one fell swoop:

  • It looks nicer, and has a pretty clean aesthetic too (especially with Adwaita, but even if one was using fat progressbars I suspect, though you might need to account for the space of that displacing the horizontal alignment of other widgets in that case)
  • Reduces visual overload, no more visual conflation of the volume sliders and volume meters when you want to find the needle in the haystack of 10 playback streams.
  • Saves space
  • Looks a LOT more like what you'd find on a mixing console
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