[pulseaudio-discuss] Awful Quality in Sound

[Rémi Cardona]

Richi Plana a écrit :
>> Is there any way to test what is causing this and if it is PulseAudio?
>> Is there a simple way to override PA and play audio via ALSA
>> snd-hda-intel drivers?
> 
> Alright, it MAY not be PA. I tried playing music from a virtual console
> using oss as the output device and it still sounded horrible.
> 
> One thing I did discover, however, was that when I turned up the Master
> volume setting and minimized the PCM volume setting, the audio quality
> improved tremendously. There seems to be some kind of attenuation going
> on when PCM controls are used. Why that is, I've no idea.

Try to use alsamixer to set the PCM level to 0 dB or bellow. On my
laptop, this level is around the value of 75%.

My take on this is that the PCM control allows to amplify the signal
beyond reasonable levels (ie above 0 dB).

Cheers,

Rémi