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Re: buster: low audio level



Quoting D. R. Evans (2020-02-12 19:05:40)
> Jonas Smedegaard wrote on 2/12/20 10:43 AM:
> > Quoting D. R. Evans (2020-02-12 18:34:27)
> >> I just installed buster on a new (to me) machine, and the audio 
> >> level is very low. With all the mixer controls and the physical 
> >> volume control on the speakers turned up, I can hear audio, but 
> >> even then it is unpleasantly quiet, certainly nothing one would 
> >> want to listen to.
> >>
> >> Any suggestions as to how to fix this, or even how to go about 
> >> investigating it sensibly, would be gratefully received.
> > 
> > Maybe you missed some mixer controls?  Desktop environments nowadays 
> > commonly use (not only ALSA but also) Pulseaudio, and a common 
> > mistake is to only play with the knobs tied to ALSA.
> > 
> > One relatively userfriendly interface to Pulseaudio that I know of 
> > is pavucontrol, available in the Debian package of the same name.  
> > You can run it as a self-contained graphical tool, or if you want it 
> > handy accesible then additionally install pasystray.
> > 
> 
> OK; I installed that, but it doesn't seem to do anything more than the 
> desktop mixer program.
> 
> It says that Analog Stereo Output is 100%, as does the mixer program. 
> Moving that slider does make the volume even lower, so it is having an 
> effect, but only to make the audio even harder to hear.

That sounds like you have looked at _one_ of the volume controls.

When I open pavucontrol (on my Debian unstable system, but should be 
similar e.g. on Debian buster), there are 5 tabs:

 * Playback
   + one control per source (e.g. "System sounds", mpv, and microphone)
 * Recording
   + one control per recorder (irrelevant for _playing_ audio)
 * Output Devices
   + one control per audio device (incl. virtual ones if enabled)
 * Input Devices
   + one control per audio device (irrelevant for _playing_ audio)
 * Configuration
   + switch to select routing mode (e.g. use HDMI instead of analog)

Make sure that you check both application level volume (for the 
application you want to test - while it is running) and output device 
volume.  Also, try available routing modes - they depend on your audio 
device(s) so I cannot tell what is correct or optimal on your system.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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