[pulseaudio-discuss] PA is very silent; doen't use the max hardware volume

[Alexander E. Patrakov]

2014/1/23 Nikos Chantziaras <realnc at gmail.com>:
> On 23/01/14 17:42, Alexander E. Patrakov wrote:
>>
>> 2014/1/23 Nikos Chantziaras <realnc at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> It seems that PA refuses to use the maximum hardware volume of my sound
>>> card
>>> (Asus Xonar D1). As a result, the audio is very silent. I have the volume
>>> sliders in pavucontrol set to 100%, but PA only uses 40% (-20db) on the
>>> hardware mixer. [...]
>>
>>
>> Which control are you raising? Maybe it is not in the default mixer
>> path known to pulseaudio?
>
>
> The control is named "Master Front".

Then it is indeed not in the default mixer path, and PulseAudio does
not know that it needs to use this control. In fact, the name is
non-standard, all other cards call this "Front", and, if true, such
non-standard name would be a kernel bug. OTOH, reading the source, I
could not find where this control name is constructed. Module author
CC:ed.

In order to work around it, you can try editing
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf and other
conf files in that directory that are relevant to outputs. Find the
[Front] section in each file and duplicate it to say [Master Front] in
the header. Please report if this helps.

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov