System volume when using ALSA

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

I feel like I am overlooking something simple, I apologize, Linux audio still continues to confuse me.
It is recommended to use ALSA with Ardour which I do.
However, for general / global system audio my Desktop Environment uses Pipewire-PulseAudio.
I would like to have a global software based volume control to control the volume on my entire system but I do not see a way to achieve this with the setup mentioned above.

When Ardour is using ALSA, the Pipewire-PulseAudio panel plugin that I use for global volume control for my entire system, has no effect on the audio being generated by Ardour, this makes sense but it is not desired.
Does anyone know if there is a way to allow my Pipewire-PulseAudio panel plugins volume control to somehow also manage the audio volume coming out of Ardour?

My goal was to not get involved with complex audio routing. I have been trying to avoid getting into things such as Pipewire-ALSA or Pipewire-JACK, but are these the only solution for what I am looking to achieve?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thank You

#2

This is not possible if Ardour is using JACK/Pipewire. The Pulseaudio controls you have seen have no impact on applications using the JACK API.

There are ways to do this with the wireplumber APIs but AFAIK there are no GUI tools that would allow you to accomplish this (yet).

There may be a hardware mixer control on your audio interface, in which case alsamixer or one of its GUI equivalents could be used to adjust that.

#3

If you want a volume control when using Ardour with ALSA, then use the monitor section.
Ardour Monitor Section in manual