Turn off the left speaker when the system starts.
Turn off the left speaker when the system starts.
The intermittent problem (5-10%) is puzzling. On startup, the left speaker is muted—Antegros Cinnamon via ALSA(Pulse Audio) on an Asus Xonar STX using the Virtuoso module. Any suggestions? Edit: Added PulseAudio Volume Controls and turned off all other outputs. - Did it help? Cinnamon Sound still keeps devices active. Update (18/10): Bug is specific to Arch Cinnamon.
Using something like gnome won't necessarily fix the issue. It might point to a problem with Cinnamon's volume control tool... Trying to mute and unmute the sound could sometimes restore the correct speaker settings, but if not, see if there are alternative methods besides restarting the application.
If silencing and reactivating fixes the issue, you might set it up to do this automatically on every startup.