- This topic has 9 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated Feb 10-4:01 pm by marcelocripe.
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oparun
I’m having quite a peculiar problem with your pre-amp thingy: though I’m in green (according to alsamixer) the sound, that comes from my speakers, is way too loud, and it looks like I’ve cranked it to 130% of 100 possible. I’ve tried to turn the pre-amp off, but it shot down the sound completely. What should i do? I’ve got only one sound card – Intel: HDA – Intel (according to your “Select Default ALSA card” thingy) and it’s selected in ALSA through pressing F5.
sybok
Hi,
I assume that you have used antiX control centre to Adjust Mixex / Alsamixer Equalizer which opens pop-up terminal with ‘alsamixer’ (the last one is not antiX an specific utility, hence no need to write “your”).
When I open my alsamixer, I see three columns that may be of relevance:
Master, Line Out, Pre-Amp[lifier].I would not turn the pre-amp off completely, just decrease the value a bit.
Hint: when you have a column active, you may use numbers to set the 1st digit of the value, e.g. pressing ‘4’ sets it to ’39’ (pretty close to ’40’).
Finer adjustments can be made with upwards/downwards pointing arrows.Comment:
In case you have installed pulseaudio + pavucontrol, they may control the sound instead and alsamixer may not be the application to look at.
Not sure how antiX control centre handles that or whether alsamixer is still relevant.
seriousness
The minimum / maximum levels of Pre-Amp can be adjusted in /etc/asound.conf .
... # ***** Pre-Amp ******************************************************** # set up the preamp device pcm.preamp { type softvol # name of slider control to display in alsamixer interface control.name Pre-Amp # minimum dB when slider is at 0% min_dB -5.0 # maximum dB when slider is at 100% max_dB 40.0 # point output to device named duplex slave.pcm "duplex" }I set max_dB to 6.0 , since 40 dB boost is way too much for my system. Set min_dB to your needs, I use -46.5.
oparun
I, alongside some friends, have a charity thing (it’ nothing official or special)): we buy out or simply take as donation
core2 – era hardware from local it companies (they have a tone of it in their storage), sometimes rebuild it
and then donate to families in rural villages. I usually install some Ubuntu 14.04 minimal + lxde, add some
useful software and call it a day. But, despite the fact that i’ve used linux for more than 10 years, i never
bothered to learn scripting, so i had to enter all commands by had, it was tedious and took way too much time.
Here comes your base – version of Antix. We’ve accepted like 20 motherboards P5KPL-AM IN/ROEM/SI and some
core2 cpus. According to Linux, they all have VT1705 Audio Chipset and the majority of them suffer from audio bug
i’ve described above. In some cases i’ve managed to, during audio playtime, turn pre-amp in alsamixer all the
way to zero. I’ve had audio on that systems, it was clear. When i tried to replicate my actions on other pcs
it just killed the audio altogether.I’ve asked about pre-amp because I’ve never seen it in any other distros. I tried googling it and found some
articles that go back to 2004 – 2009 (e.g archforum, gentoo forum). And the idea of using pre-amp, according
to amout of comments, wasn’t popular. Even if i lover the pre-amp value to 1 of 4 the audio is still like
overloaded, my speakers made some hr – hr – hr sound (when you listen to music). I’ve tried to install
alsamixergui but it didn’t show any unorthodox settings or values that can distro audio.- This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by oparun.
ModdIt
I have several core 2 duo systems to look after, lucky I guess, stereo sound works but means I am unable to
replicate the issue for troubleshooting..Could you please take a look if you have different BIOS versions between working and non working sound.
Might be board revisions affected though. This is one of the reasons certain boards and chipsets had a very
bad reputation even among windoze users. Asus and Asrock are often still called asrot or asrotten.Maybe someone here knows how to use a windows driver in linux with ndiswrapper. They are available for win 8.
It might provide a way out. v101200a is driver for qoted board.Sound card, if available and some sound card dongles work with linux, dongles probably cheapest.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by ModdIt.
seriousness
oparun
Finally, I can say that I’ve solved this strange audio glitch. I’ve spent hours installing different os’s and trying to replicate this glitch elsewhere. I’ve tried ubuntu 18.04 with alsa, recent debian with alsa or pulseaudio, slackware with pulseaudio. Everything worked fine, no audio artifacts, no hisses etc. To overcome this strange loudness trouble, one must play around with his equalizer and set everything to 40 dB. I’d like to stress that when I tried to edit asound.conf by had, it just killed my alsa, and I wasn’t able to bring it back to life.
Hi oparun,
thanks for feedback and very good you have a fix for your setup.
Maybe the standard settings in some other distros are better chosen. pulseaudio is a layer on top of alsa in reality it degrades sound.
Other users may find 40db too high, it depends on the input sensetivity of the main amplifier, pre too low you get noise, pre too high distortion and clipping.
Clipping (like a square wave in extreme cases) can kill speakers so better to err on pre low side.
blur13
Oparun, thank you so much for posting this solution! This has been driving me nuts! I had set the pre-amp to 1 and was still getting distorted sound. Using pulseaudio solved the problem. Using pulseaudio in antiX 19.5 is problematic because it quits all the time. However, that proved that the sound card was capable of perfect audio. I changed the alsa equalizer to 40 across the board, like you suggested, and the sound is perfect.
I had the exact same issue with two systems, each with different sound cards. Its not a hardware issue. Its a software issue. My suggestion would be to make 40db the default on the equalizer in antiX.
marcelocripe
Hello oparun.
I’m not an expert on antiX Linux or ALSA, but I can tell you how I view “Alsamixer” and “Alsamixer Equalizer”.
The “Alsamixer” and “Alsamixer Equalizer” are very similar to a digital Mixing Console. The “Alsamixer” controls the overall sound levels of the devices (master volume, microphone, headphones, preamp, etc.), the “Alsamixer Equalizer” controls the sound effects (bass, mid and treble).
If a video or audio from the internet is at a very low master volume, it will be necessary to use the preamp to implement a gain in the sound output. However, this gain in sound output will increase the sound effects (bass, mid, treble, echo, reverb, distortion and noise). To lessen unwanted sound effects, we use the equalizer to minimize the side effects of gain on the sound output. Likewise, if a video or audio from the internet is at a very high master volume or has some effect of the sound in excess (for example, too bass), we will need to reduce the preamp gain and still reduce the bass, medium and treble.
marcelocripe
(Original text in Brazilian Portuguese)– – – – –
Olá oparun.
Eu não sou um especialista sobre o antiX Linux ou sobre o ALSA, mas posso dizer como eu vejo o “Alsamixer” e o “Alsamixer Equalizer”.
O “Alsamixer” e o “Alsamixer Equalizer” são muito parecidos com um digital Mixing Console. O “Alsamixer” faz o controle geral do níveis de som dos dispositivos (volume mestre, microfone, fone de ouvido, pré-amplificador, etc.), o “Alsamixer Equalizer” faz o controle dos efeitos do som (grave, médio e agudo).
Se um vídeo ou um áudio da internet estiver com o volume mestre em nível muito baixo, será necessário utilizar o pré-amplificador para implementar um ganho na saída de som. Contudo, este ganho na saída de som vai aumentar os efeitos do som (grave, médio, agudo, eco, reverberação, distorções e ruídos). Para diminuir os efeitos do som indesejados, utilizamos o equalizador para minimizar os efeitos colaterais do ganho na saída de som. Da mesma forma, se um vídeo ou um áudio da internet estiver com o volume mestre em um nível muito alto ou com algum efeito do som em excesso (por exemplo, muito grave), precisaremos reduzir o ganho do pré-amplificador e ainda reduzir o grave, o médio e o agudo.
marcelocripe
(Texto original em idioma Português do Brasil)
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