alsamixer mic setting not preserved

Hi,

I was having trouble with using my T500’s internal microphone, and I figured out that if I run alsamixer in terminal, and if I increase the level of “internal mic,” then it works fine.
Now the problem is that it seems periodically the setting reverts and I lose the mic volume and I have to re run alsamixer and do the setting again.

Is there any way I can set this setting in KDE, and preserve the setting once it is done?

Thanks!

Install the pulse audio volume control (pavucontrol) and try setting it there.

Thanks for the tip. May I ask you why kmix does not have this setting?

You may ask. I can’t answer. Thats a question for the developers and packagers, not for an average user like me.

… May I ask you why kmix does not have this setting?

With PulseAudio, the emphasis is on controlling sources (e.g. Mic) and sinks (e.g. Speaker) by application. For KMix levels, and running applications using Mic, application sliders appear on the Capture Streams tab. The overall Mic level settings will therefore vary depending on the [default] levels set by applications.

There is also a tab for Capture Devices containing a slider for each device present and detected. The same structure exists for playback devices and per-application setting. In my experience with KMix, manually altering either Device or Application tab sliders will affect the other tab slider(s) and the master KMix slider (icon in the system tray). The levels are probably only reset to PulseAudio defaults when you restart the system.

That is only my view as a user on how it appears to operate. However, I am sure from searching the pulseaudio website for comment that the P/A developers made a decision not to provide the user with control [via P/A] over several traditional mixer settings which they regarded as unnecessarily complicating or obscure.

Its also possible to adjust mic (and volume) control levels via the amixer command. I think it took me close to 10 years of using GNU/Linux before I finally wrapped my head around the syntax of THAT command, but eventually after over a decade, the utility of its somewhat puzzling ascii/text command line input finally sank into my head (most likely due to osmosis through the many cracks in my skull :sarcastic: ) and I finally am able to use ‘amixer’ a bit. Even in today’s day of desktop GUI mixers and pulse audio, its a handy tool/application to have in one’s arsenal.

Thanks for the helpful replies!