[pulseaudio-discuss] Sound output is muted at 16% volume

[Marti Raudsepp]

Hi list,

I gave PulseAudio a try and it seems to be working fine so far

There is a small problem with volume controls. When I reduce the PA
volume control below 16%, then volume is muted entirely. Apparently
this happens because the ALSA "Master" control reaches 0%, which mutes
all sound output on my hardware (even though the ALSA "mute" flag is
not set). This seems hardware-specific, as I haven't seen this
behavior on any other computers; usually 0% volume still outputs some
level of sound.

I tried with kernels 2.6.32 and 2.6.33, PA 0.9.21, ALSA 1.0.21.

The sound chip according to ALSA is SigmaTel STAC9205 using the HDA driver

according to lspci:
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD
Audio Controller [8086:284b] (rev 02)

I tried working around this by changing the PCM level in alsamixer,
but whenever a new client connects, PulseAudio thinks it's smarter
than me and resets the PCM mixer -- to somewhere between 0.00 ...
-0.60 dB (?!), and sets the master level to 0% again

So there are 2 distinct problems:
1. The STAC9205  0% volume quirk needs to be handled somewhere
2. If PulseAudio wants to maximize some volume controls, it should set
them at 0.0 dB, not -0.60 dB

Regards,
Marti Raudsepp