It seems that I have found at least a partial solution. It's a partial solution because I now know the command to run, but I do not know where to put it so that it is executed system-wide. I thought /etc/profile might work, but I couldn't get it to work. Anybody have an idea for how to run this command for each user that logs in?
Should anybody be having the same problem, below is how I figured out the exact command to run on my system. Maybe somebody will come along and provide the rest of the solution.
pacmd is a program for reconfiguring the PulseAudio sound server during runtime.
The general form of the pacmd command: pacmd set-sink-volume (args: index|name, volume)
This is the specific command that I use on my system, using alsa_output.pci-0000_02_09.0.analog-stereo and 10000 for the 'name' and 'volume' arguments, respectively: pacmd set-sink-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_02_09.0.analog-stereo 10000
As for the my command, this is how I figured it out (in a condensed way):
NOTE: I did the following with my speakers turned OFF!
1) pacmd help | grep volume
This gave me the following:
set-sink-volume Set the volume of a sink (args: index|name, volume)
set-sink-input-volume Set the volume of a sink input (args: index, volume)
set-source-volume Set the volume of a source (args: index|name, volume)
2) I did not know which volume to set, so I started to fool around with the graphical volume setting to see what changed.
First, I set the volume to something high, then issued this command: pacmd info | grep volume
Then, I set the volume to something low, then issed the "pacmd info | grep volume" command again. There was definitely a change. In my case the volume went from 86% to 16%.
Without any further volume adjustments, I dumped all the info from the 'pacmd info' command into a text file on my Desktop: pacmd info > ~/Desktop/pacmd.txt
3) To learn what volume to adjust via pacmd (i.e., set-sink-volume; set-sink-input-volume; or set-source-volume), I opened the pacmd.txt file on my Desktop and searched for 16% (my last volume setting).
I the general section where I found the 16% volume, I also found the index and name of my sink:
1 sink(s) available.
* index: 0
name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_02_09.0.analog-stereo>
Further down in the file, it said, "0 sink input(s) available," so I knew it was "set-sink-volume" that I wanted to adjust and not "set-sink-input-volume."
4) Knowing which args to plug into the command, I started playing with the volume. I found that a volume argument of 10000 gave me 15% on the graphical volume setting.
I adjustied the volume setting iteratively using the following commands until I found 15% with 2.:
1. pacmd set-sink-volume <index|name> <0-65000+>
2. pacmd info | grep "volume: "
I found that a volume 65000 gave 99%, but that that was not the upper limit!
That's it! Now, if anybody could help me find a way to get the command to run for each user upon login, it would be much appreciated! Thanks.