On 10/14/2011 07:18 PM, Soeren D. Schulze wrote:
I am running PulseAudio on my laptop (Asus P50IJ) that has an Intel HDA
card (chipset VIA VT1708S, Linux 3.0.0, Debian wheezy).
VIA codecs are not that common. That's the main reason (I assume) its
chipset drivers are not as well standardised as Realtek or IDT ones are.
The card basically has four mixer elements:
1. "Master Front", which controls the master volume
2. "Headphone", which does not seem to be doing anything
3. "PCM" -- obvious
4. "Front" -- similar to "Master Front", see below
The right way to adjust the volume (in alsamixer) is:
- When you want to use the built-in speakers, you need to adjust "Master
Front" or "Front". PulseAudio adjusts "Front", which works. The only bad
thing is that is ignores "Master Front" completely, so when it's at low
volume by accident, you have to open alsamixer in order to fix the problem.
- When you want to use headphones, the card is a bit strange: You need
to *mute* "Front" to turn the built-in speaker off. But apart from that,
both "Master Front" and "Front" still have the same effect as for the
built-in speakers, so you must not turn the volume of "Front" down, even
though it is muted. PulseAudio controls the "Headphones" element,
though, which does nothing, and it sometimes un-mutes "Front",
accidentally turning on the built-in speakers (which might be really
unpleasant in some situations).
Is there any canonical way out of this?
Funny you would use that wording, because here at Canonical [1] we have
actually a patch that handles "Master Front"! [2] I don't remember
exactly why Colin said this shouldn't be upstreamed, but I think it was
related to Takashi not liking "Master Front" or something.
Is it PulseAudio that I need to
configure or is it the driver that needs fixing?
If the "headphone" volume control does not control the headphone volume,
then that's a clear driver bug. I also remember an oddity in the driver
actually toggling the "Front" mute flag when you plugged/unplugged
headphones. When PulseAudio picks this up things can be a little bit
unexpected...
And btw, avoid the "Independent HP" switch (set it to False/Off). It
doesn't work well with Pulseaudio, unless you configure sinks by yourself.
--
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
http://launchpad.net/~diwic
[1] TBH it might just as well have been an Ubuntu volunteer who added
the patch, but I didn't want to ruin the pun ;-)
[2]
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-audio-dev/pulseaudio/ubuntu.oneiric/view/head:/debian/patches/0007-handle-Master-Front.patch
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