Using MPD to control system volume

I’m a big fan of the Music Player Daemon on my home linux (Ubuntu) server, and I use a variety of clients to control it (mpc, Pitchfork, GMPC, even a custom Chumby interface I adapted).  But until now there was a disjunction between volume controls—mpd’s default configuration is to control the “PCM” mixer channel instead of “Master,” which meant I couldn’t control the Master volume remotely, but was controlling Master locally.

Finally last night I realized you could change that in the /etc/mpd.conf file.  Here’s what I used in mine:

############################# MIXER ############################
#
# MPD needs to know what mixer settings to change when you
# adjust the volume. If you don't specify one here, MPD will
# pick one based on which ones it was compiled with support for.
#
# An example for controlling an ALSA mixer:
#
mixer_type "alsa"
mixer_device "default"
mixer_control "Master"

Now it works perfectly; I can control the system volume from any of my clients (Pitchfork being the one that gets used the most).

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