[pulseaudio-discuss] Need help with audio gain on an Intel HDA equipt ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 16 January 2014 15:19:48 Alexander E. Patrakov did opine:

> 2014/1/16 Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com>:
> > On Thursday 16 January 2014 12:08:37 Alexander E. Patrakov did opine:
> >> Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> > Master and PCM, and those are apparently not slaved to the little
> >> > indicator applet that pops up with a horizontal slider at the top
> >> > of the screen when I hit the mute, vol-down and vol-up buttons in
> >> > the top edge of the keyboard.  all 3 effect but the alsa sliders
> >> > were and are now, wide open.
> >> 
> >> Sorry, this can't be the full story. Your alsa-info file says that
> >> you also have a Front control and a Headphones control. If none of
> >> these has any effect, it is a bug. Please try moving all controls up
> >> and down with arrows, including the controls that are past the right
> >> border of the initial alsamixer window.
> > 
> > I am fairly familiar with alsamixer.  I tried every slider for effect.
> > Some switched modes or i/o jacks, without effect. I had an F5 in
> > effect, so it was about 2x the screen width on this 1920 wide
> > monitor.  Lots & lots of knobs with no audible effect.
> 
> At this point, because the Front control does not work, we can
> conclude that this is an ALSA bug, in the kernel. Raymond is a much
> better specialist than myself in this area, so my advice would be to
> continue debugging with him.

In attempting to reprove that front doesn't work, now I cannot get FF to 
give me a video to test play.  And all the blockers are disabled.  Ok, 
chrome works and so now does the "front" slider.

> A complementary strategy woud be to install HDA Analyzer, see
> http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/HDA_Analyzer . It is a
> low-level tool that allows to control HDA soundcards at much lower
> level than alsamixer. Run it as root. You have to work the way from
> the correct AUD_OUT widget to the correct PIN (or it may be easier to
> go backwards), and try to change various things. The Graph button will
> help you to find the relevant widgets. If this doesn't help, just
> treat the program as a black box. You only need to deal with widgets
> under codec #0.
> 
> In general, for PINs, try to change the Active source in the
> Connection list, try moving the sliders, and try toggling the HP
> checkbox. For AUD_MIX and AUD_OUT things, move sliders and mute/unmute
> them. If, by any chance, you find something that increases the output
> volume or makes the Front control in alsamixer work, press the Diff
> button, copy-paste everything from that window and send it here.

Since the front slider is working, although chrome seems to be running the 
video player with hdwe accell defaulting on, which chops up most videos, 
although Bill OReily is playing smoothly right now.

Confusing results, front did not work the first time I walked through 
alsamixer's gui.
 
> > A bug, in the docs? good heavens, how did that happen? ;-)
> > 
> > But how do you convince a distro to update a man page?  In my
> > experience it cannot to done.
> 
> Submit a patch that updates the manpage to the alsa-devel list. When a
> new version of alsa-utils is released, distributions will pick it up.

Thank you Alexander.

Cheers, Gene
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