[pulseaudio-discuss] permanent microphone boost

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Lennart Poettering at 08/05/10 00:28 did gyre and gimble:
> On Thu, 06.05.10 09:24, Colin Guthrie (gmane at colin.guthr.ie) wrote:
> 
>>
>> 'Twas brillig, and Piscium at 05/05/10 19:00 did gyre and gimble:
>>> I am completely ignorant about audio stacks, so I don't know if mic
>>> boost belongs in Alsa or PA. However as far as I know the only audio
>>> GUI that comes in the default installation for some distros is
>>> PulseAudio's. So from a usability point of view it would be nice to
>>> have a tick box for mic boost there. Such a tick box is for example
>>> available in Windows.
>>>
>>> So I am happy that I found how to solve my problem with the help of
>>> the forum, but other people are probably not so lucky!
>>
>> Well the solution you're using is not really a good one. It will not
>> work when a mixer probably controls that element, which AFAICT is what
>> should happen.
>>
>> Perhaps it's just not handled properly (despite the fact that on the
>> surface the code looks like it should work).
>>
>> I'll ask Lennart to comment to hopefully get to the bottom of the real
>> problem.
> 
> If the 20dB are needed for this specific mike, and not for all mikes on
> the soundcard then this looks like something we probably should cover in
> the mixer logic in PA. (if it is needed for all mikes, then the alsa
> init db should be fixed instead)
> 
> Please attach the excerpt of "amixer -c0" about the one switch that made
> things work for you and we can add it to the PA mixer database.

The problem is that it *is* already in the mixer database. It's the
standard "Mic Boost (20dB)" one. But this doesn't seem to translate into
a port option as I'd expect.

How are these boosts meant to be handled? I presumed it was like the
"amplifier-on" vs "amplifier-off" port options?

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

Day Job:
  Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
Open Source:
  Mandriva Linux Contributor [http://www.mandriva.com/]
  PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
  Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]