[pulseaudio-discuss] USB headset Steelseries Arctis troubleshooting

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Fri, 2017-08-18 at 22:33 +0300, Johan Heikkilä wrote:
> 2017-08-18 7:04 GMT+03:00 Tanu Kaskinen <tanuk at iki.fi>:
> > 
> > You wrote in the first mail that you had to turn the volume up in
> > alsamixer. If we want to fix this for all users, that step should be
> > eliminated.
> > 
> 
> OK, if you put it that way. I don't know where to configure that, though.
> 
> > 
> > Can you show the output of "amixer -c1"? Replace "1" with whatever
> > index alsa has assigned to the card (you can see the indexes in
> > /proc/asound/cards).
> 
> amixer -c1
> Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
>   Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
>   Playback channels: Mono
>   Limits: Playback 0 - 64
>   Mono: Playback 60 [94%] [-4.00dB] [on]
> Simple mixer control 'PCM',1
>   Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
>   Playback channels: Mono
>   Limits: Playback 0 - 64
>   Mono: Playback 60 [94%] [-4.00dB] [on]
> Simple mixer control 'Headset',0
>   Capabilities: cvolume cvolume-joined cswitch cswitch-joined
>   Capture channels: Mono
>   Limits: Capture 0 - 70
>   Mono: Capture 70 [100%] [6.00dB] [on]
> 
> I can't remember what the volume level was when I first plugged it in,
> just that it was too low. The mic was way too low, it probably needs
> 100% (I tried recording in audacity). I'm not sure about the output
> levels, could be set at 100%, but then you could hurt your ears at
> 100% master level. Depends on material of course.

Ok, so there are two volume and mute elements for playback and one
volume and mute element for capture. The playback elements have the
same name, "PCM", and they are distinguished by their index (0 and 1).
PulseAudio doesn't currently support multiple elements with the same
name, so only the PCM with index 0 will be used by PulseAudio. Which
one is it, mono or stereo? Probably mono, since hw:1,0 is mono and
hw:1,1 is stereo.

Below is the path configuration for your card. There's no path
configuration for the stereo output due to the limitation I described,
so users may still have to adjust the alsa mixer manually to not have
too low volume on the stereo output.

By the way, what's the exact model of the headset? And what's the udev
configuration line that you're using? It seems that there are two USB
headsets, "Arctis 5" and "Arctis 7". I'll assume Arctis 5 in the file
naming below. Not that this matters at this point, but when I submit a
patch, I need to know the exact model.

Create file
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/steelseries-arctis-5-output-mono.conf
with the following contents:

[Element PCM]
volume = merge
switch = mute
override-map.1 = all
override-map.2 = all-left,all-right

Create file
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/steelseries-arctis-5-input.conf
with the following contents:

[Element Headset]
volume = merge
switch = mute
override-map.1 = all
override-map.2 = all-left,all-right

Then use

    paths-output = steelseries-arctis-5-output-mono

in the mono output mapping and

    paths-input = steelseries-arctis-5-input

in the input mapping.

Does this make the gnome UI work better?

-- 
Tanu

https://www.patreon.com/tanuk