Hey, I'm using xfce and I noticed yesterday or today that muting and unmuting doesn't really unmute. I have to manually unmute all channels (except for master) in alsamixer. Has anyone else that problem?
Note, I'm only using alsa without pulseaudio.
Not sure if this is the kind of fix you're looking for, but I installed the volumeicon package which gives you a volume icon in the system tray. From that icon you can get to a preferences setting that lets you toggle xf86audiomute on and off. I found this on accident as I normally don't use keyboard shortcuts, so I didn't learn another method, but I assume that you have to write an xorg config file.
I already use volumeicon. And just recently the problem arose.