On 12/29/2016 11:37 AM, Mick wrote: > On Thursday 29 Dec 2016 12:26:23 Corbin Bird wrote: >> On 12/29/2016 07:21 AM, Mick wrote: >>> Hi All, >>> >>> My sound has been behaving erratically for a while now, probably since >>> pulseaudio started being shipped with various desktop applications. This >>> is what I am talking about: >>> >>> Sound level undesirable >>> ============== >>> Kmail pops up a warning and the sound level is 100%. The first time. On >>> the second warning when it happens a couple of seconds later, the sound >>> level is back down to normal levels, say 55%. Without me interfering >>> with any audio settings. >>> >>> Some time later another warning pops up and this time the sound may be >>> normal, a second warning a couple of seconds later may be back to 100%. >>> It appears to me as if sound levels generated by dekstop/application >>> warnings are adjusted dynamically on the fly and at will, but not my will >>> ... >>> >>> Non-KDE applications, e.g. Pidgin bleep at top volume when IMs are >>> sent/received. Adjusting their volume thankfully sticks, at least for the >>> desktop session in question. >>> >>> >>> Alsamixer >>> ====== >>> >>> Running alsamixer shows: >>> Card: PulseAudio >>> Chip: PulseAudio >>> >>> with a single Master bar for adjusting the volume. Selecting F6 shows >>> Sound Card set to (default), with 'HDA Intel MID' and 'HDA ATI HDMI' >>> below it. When I select 0 for 'HDA Intel MID' I get all my familiar >>> alsamixer settings back including Master, Headphones, Speaker, PCM, Mic, >>> etc. >>> >>> Adjusting these allow me to arrive at sane volume levels as used to be the >>> case in the past. However, the annoying thing is these settings do not >>> stick between reboots. >>> >>> >>> On another laptop with a different audio card, things are even stranger. >>> The card pops/crackles at boot time, but all sound is dead unless and >>> until I run alsactl init. Then if the sound gets quite loud, e.g. the >>> other side of a Skype call raises their voice above a certain level, all >>> sound is lost until I run alsactl init again. This is becoming tedious >>> to say the least. >>> >>> >>> Have you noticed anything similar to either of the above problems ? What >>> may be causing these problems and are there any fixes/workarounds? I >>> honestly can't recall sound ever being such a pain on my systems. >> >> Link : >>> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA >> >> The link above is a good way to start. ( troubleshooting as well ) >> Gentoo has a boot shell script that does the "alsactl init" and shutdown >> for you. ( media-sound/alsa-utils ) >> Just be sure you also take a look at "/etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf" and >> make the required changes there as well. > > Thank you Corbin, I've already been through the article and my alsa.conf has > been working happily for years. This is a relatively recent problem though > and I haven't found anything in the article that mentions these symptoms or > addresses the problems I described above. >
I installed pulse to deal with spdif mixing (which alsa couldn't seem to do by itself at the time) and had odd problems until I used pulse's own mixer. Have you tried that? media-sound/pavucontrol - and it wasn't installed with pulse, I had to install it separately. I remember looking around for a curses-based mixer but at the time couldn't find one. I remember there was a setting there somewhere that was making something not quite work, I changed it and it's all good now. Dan
