[gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
Hi, Gentoo! On my PC's audio, whilst playing CDs, with all volume settings maxed out, the volume can't be said to be louder than comfortable and sensible. In quiet passages, the music gets drowned out by the noise of the power supply. I know from plugging in my iPod that the loudspeakers are capable of much more. The three volume controls up at full are (i) the one in aqualung; (ii) the one in alsamixer; (iii) the physical control on the right speaker. Surely I can get more volume, somehow. Could somebody please suggest how. TIA -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Alan Mackenzie a...@muc.de wrote: Hi, Gentoo! On my PC's audio, whilst playing CDs, with all volume settings maxed out, the volume can't be said to be louder than comfortable and sensible. In quiet passages, the music gets drowned out by the noise of the power supply. I know from plugging in my iPod that the loudspeakers are capable of much more. The three volume controls up at full are (i) the one in aqualung; (ii) the one in alsamixer; (iii) the physical control on the right speaker. Surely I can get more volume, somehow. Could somebody please suggest how. TIA How are you playing the CDs? I think there are 2 basic ways, either software (reading the data from the disc and playing it), or via line-in (software simply issues play command to the drive which outputs via the audio cable, or some drives even have audio controls on the front panel). If the former, the volume should be the same as if you play an MP3, for example. If the latter, maybe you need to find the inputs in alsamixer and boost them, if possible.
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Alan Mackenzie a...@muc.de wrote: Hi, Gentoo! On my PC's audio, whilst playing CDs, with all volume settings maxed out, the volume can't be said to be louder than comfortable and sensible. In quiet passages, the music gets drowned out by the noise of the power supply. I know from plugging in my iPod that the loudspeakers are capable of much more. The three volume controls up at full are (i) the one in aqualung; (ii) the one in alsamixer; (iii) the physical control on the right speaker. Surely I can get more volume, somehow. Could somebody please suggest how. TIA Check that PA isn't getting in the way somewhere. Try using a different media player. See if you can find out if the files' ReplayGain feature is or is not involved. Check that you're outputting to the correct audio sink; I've had cases where I *thought* things were working, but really quiet, and it turned out that crosstalk was the only reason I was hearing anything. -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Alan Mackenzie a...@muc.de wrote: Hi, Gentoo! On my PC's audio, whilst playing CDs, with all volume settings maxed out, the volume can't be said to be louder than comfortable and sensible. In quiet passages, the music gets drowned out by the noise of the power supply. I know from plugging in my iPod that the loudspeakers are capable of much more. The three volume controls up at full are (i) the one in aqualung; (ii) the one in alsamixer; (iii) the physical control on the right speaker. Surely I can get more volume, somehow. Could somebody please suggest how. TIA -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). Are you using powered or passive speakers? On my dad's machine he had passive speakers and the Intel on-board audio just wouldn't get very loud so we bought some powered speakers and things were fine. In my office I've got some nice NHT Pro Powered Studio Monitors so I don't have that problem. If you're using headphones then check their impedance spec vs what the MB says it's designed to drive, as well as the efficiency of the headphones. I own some AKG Sony headphones. The Sony pair is _way_ louder than the AKG pair. HTH, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
Alan Mackenzie writes: On my PC's audio, whilst playing CDs, with all volume settings maxed out, the volume can't be said to be louder than comfortable and sensible. In quiet passages, the music gets drowned out by the noise of the power supply. I know from plugging in my iPod that the loudspeakers are capable of much more. The three volume controls up at full are (i) the one in aqualung; (ii) the one in alsamixer; (iii) the physical control on the right speaker. The ONE in alsamixer? I have at least PCM, Front and CD, another PC also has Master. Are you missing some of those? Is a channel muted (you see 'MM' inmstead of a volume, use the M key to unmute)? Maybe you have to scroll with the right arrow key to see those channels? Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
Hi, Alex On Thu, Nov 03, 2011 at 07:16:53PM +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: Alan Mackenzie writes: On my PC's audio, whilst playing CDs, with all volume settings maxed out, the volume can't be said to be louder than comfortable and sensible. In quiet passages, the music gets drowned out by the noise of the power supply. I know from plugging in my iPod that the loudspeakers are capable of much more. The three volume controls up at full are (i) the one in aqualung; (ii) the one in alsamixer; (iii) the physical control on the right speaker. The ONE in alsamixer? I have at least PCM, Front and CD, another PC also has Master. Are you missing some of those? Is a channel muted (you see 'MM' inmstead of a volume, use the M key to unmute)? Maybe you have to scroll with the right arrow key to see those channels? Ah, that was the problem. There are four effective volume controls in alsamixer: master, PCM, front, and side. They seem to multply together (each in the range 0 to 1). My side was only at ~30/100, the others being around 80. Now they're all set to 93/100, and the volume control on the speakers works sensibly. Why side? What is PCM? Presumably all these controls are for massive batteries of loudspeakers right, left, centre and behind. Wonko -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
Hi, Paul. On Thu, Nov 03, 2011 at 12:58:16PM -0500, Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Alan Mackenzie a...@muc.de wrote: Hi, Gentoo! On my PC's audio, whilst playing CDs, with all volume settings maxed out, the volume can't be said to be louder than comfortable and sensible. In quiet passages, the music gets drowned out by the noise of the power supply. I know from plugging in my iPod that the loudspeakers are capable of much more. The three volume controls up at full are (i) the one in aqualung; (ii) the one in alsamixer; (iii) the physical control on the right speaker. Surely I can get more volume, somehow. Could somebody please suggest how. TIA How are you playing the CDs? I think there are 2 basic ways, either software (reading the data from the disc and playing it), or via line-in (software simply issues play command to the drive which outputs via the audio cable, or some drives even have audio controls on the front panel). The CD is being read as data and converted to something which is fed to the sound chip. If the former, the volume should be the same as if you play an MP3, for example. Could you suggest a good program to play MP3 files, please If the latter, maybe you need to find the inputs in alsamixer and boost them, if possible. Yes, one of my alsamixer controls was too low. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Alan Mackenzie a...@muc.de wrote: Hi, Alex On Thu, Nov 03, 2011 at 07:16:53PM +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: The ONE in alsamixer? I have at least PCM, Front and CD, another PC also has Master. Are you missing some of those? Is a channel muted (you see 'MM' inmstead of a volume, use the M key to unmute)? Maybe you have to scroll with the right arrow key to see those channels? Ah, that was the problem. There are four effective volume controls in alsamixer: master, PCM, front, and side. They seem to multply together (each in the range 0 to 1). My side was only at ~30/100, the others being around 80. Now they're all set to 93/100, and the volume control on the speakers works sensibly. Why side? Support for, e.g. 5.1 channel surround sound. What is PCM? Pulse Code Modulation. A method of encoding audio data digitally. In ALSA, this usually refers to applications' feeding audio data in via purely-software means. (As opposed to via a sound card's onboard input) -- :wq
Re: [gentoo-user] How do I turn my audio up?
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Alan Mackenzie a...@muc.de wrote: Could you suggest a good program to play MP3 files, please I use mplayer for one-off playing of files, or Amarok for managing my entire collection.
