Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

Hello everyone!

I have a conundrum for you.

Today I had rebooted into Windows to take care of something and when I
booted right back into debian, my sound became very very very quiet. To
confirm my hardware wasn't on the fritz, I rebooted back into Windows to
be greeted with normal volume. Back in Linux I double checked and found,
indeed, all my relevant channels (Master, PCM, and Front.) were maxed out.


Later in alsamixer I unmuted and maxed out every channel I could find,
input and output. No dice.


Any ideas on why ALSA is suddenly outputting my sound so very quietly
despite my volume levels being all the way up?


Thanks.


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Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

On Sep 25, 2012 12:18 PM, "Conrad Nelson" <yaro@marupa.net> wrote:

> Any ideas on why ALSA is suddenly outputting my sound so very quietly despite my volume levels being all the way up?

Annoyingly, this has always been a problem for me with a Thinkpad T400.* I'd be interested in a fix, too.

Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

On 09/25/2012 04:21 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:



On Sep 25, 2012 12:18 PM, "Conrad Nelson" <yaro@marupa.net>
wrote:

> Any ideas on why ALSA is suddenly outputting my
sound so very quietly despite my volume levels being all the way
up?

Annoyingly, this has always been a problem for me
with a Thinkpad T400.* I'd be interested in a fix, too.


It's very annoying, especially since it was working fine before, and
I wonder if Windows set some property I'm not finding in Debian.



Any help would be appreciated.

Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 12:17:44PM -0500, Conrad Nelson wrote:
> Hello everyone!
>
> I have a conundrum for you.
>
> Today I had rebooted into Windows to take care of something and when
> I booted right back into debian, my sound became very very very
> quiet. To confirm my hardware wasn't on the fritz, I rebooted back
> into Windows to be greeted with normal volume. Back in Linux I
> double checked and found, indeed, all my relevant channels (Master,
> PCM, and Front.) were maxed out.
>
> Later in alsamixer I unmuted and maxed out every channel I could
> find, input and output. No dice.
>
> Any ideas on why ALSA is suddenly outputting my sound so very
> quietly despite my volume levels being all the way up?

There are two possibilities I can think of. One is that you're using
pulseaudio and not checking its volume level (to confirm this, start
alsamixer and press F6 to select a different 'card').

Alternatively, the windows driver might know about some control on your
sound card that ALSA doesn't. Check the ALSA webpage for information
about your sound card (you didn't say what it was) and see if anyone's
reported bugs.

Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

Hi Conrad,

Please do not reply to an un-related post when you are writing
a new topic to a mailing list. For clients that support threading,
the result is your discussion mixed up with the other one. This can
mean either confusion for people participating in the other thread,
or less exposure for your issue (as it could be hidden with the
unrelated topic).


Thanks


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Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 4:01 AM, Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> wrote:

There are two possibilities I can think of. One is that you're using

pulseaudio and not checking its volume level (to confirm this, start

alsamixer and press F6 to select a different 'card').

Didn't think I was using pulseaudio, checked anyway to be sure. *Pulse isn't in the equation for me.
*
Alternatively, the windows driver might know about some control on your

sound card that ALSA doesn't. Check the ALSA webpage for information

about your sound card (you didn't say what it was) and see if anyone's

reported bugs.
Here's the lspci -v output on that:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 20f2
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at fc220000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel

Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

On Tue 25 Sep 2012 at 21:49:58 -0500, Conrad Nelson wrote:

> On 09/25/2012 04:21 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:
> >
> >
> >On Sep 25, 2012 12:18 PM, "Conrad Nelson" <yaro@marupa.net
> ><mailto:yaro@marupa.net>> wrote:
> >
> >> Any ideas on why ALSA is suddenly outputting my sound so very
> >quietly despite my volume levels being all the way up?
> >
> >Annoyingly, this has always been a problem for me with a Thinkpad
> >T400. I'd be interested in a fix, too.
> >
> It's very annoying, especially since it was working fine before, and
> I wonder if Windows set some property I'm not finding in Debian.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.

I've really no idea why booting into Windows should prevent ALSA
managing your sound card correctly but let it be a lesson to you. :)

The advice given at

http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/adding-an-alsa-software-pre-amp-to-fix-low-sound-levels/

does work. There is an extra control in alsamixer and rebooting is
not necessary to get it. See how you go on.


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Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

On Wed 26 Sep 2012 at 16:06:21 +0100, Brian wrote:

> The advice given at
>
> http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/adding-an-alsa-software-pre-amp-to-fix-low-sound-levels/
>
> does work. There is an extra control in alsamixer and rebooting is
> not necessary to get it. See how you go on.

I forgot to mention: the file to put in /etc is asound.conf.


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Sound very *very* quiet on Debian.
 

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:



The advice given at



* *http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/adding-an-alsa-software-pre-amp-to-fix-low-sound-levels/



does work. There is an extra control in alsamixer and rebooting is

not necessary to get it. See how you go on.



Well, that was stupid-easy. *Thanks!*