snd_hda_intel and volume level

[user]

Hi all,
my laptop has an audio card which lspci shows as

 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

i’ve tried playing with alsamixer and the pulse audio settings, but the volume level is still extremely low.
does anybody have any experience with this chip? i’ve found occurrences of people with similar problems, but nothing to fix it.

thanks for reading.

[malcolmlewis]

@oliolicat

Hi all,
my laptop has an audio card which lspci shows as

Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio
Controller (rev 03)

i’ve tried playing with alsamixer and the pulse audio settings, but the
volume level is still extremely low.
does anybody have any experience with this chip? i’ve found occurrences
of people with similar problems, but nothing to fix it.

thanks for reading.

Hi
Have you changed the settings in YaST? Hardware->sound and then
press the button called ‘other’ and select ‘Volume’ Set both sliders
to 100% and hit test.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 10 SP2 i586 Kernel 2.6.16.60-0.25-default
up 0:35, 1 user, load average: 1.11, 0.54, 0.45
GPU GeForce Go 6600 TE/6200 TE Version: 173.14.09

[oldcpu]

@oliolicat

i’ve found occurrences of people with similar problems, but nothing to fix it.

I’m trying to understand this last comment. Do you mean the fixes that worked for other people, didn’t work for you? Or do you mean the people with similar problems never had it fixed? If the later, please provide the links, as I would like to help those people. I’ve searched, and can’t find threads where users were abandoned with low volume levels on their PC.

… Typically low volume level is due to a misconfiguration, often in YaST > Hardware > Sound, or in one’s mixer (typically master volume or PCM volume too low).

[gkuenning]

@malcolmlewis

Hi
Have you changed the settings in YaST? Hardware->sound and then
press the button called ‘other’ and select ‘Volume’ Set both sliders
to 100% and hit test.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SLED 10 SP2 i586 Kernel 2.6.16.60-0.25-default
up 0:35, 1 user, load average: 1.11, 0.54, 0.45
GPU GeForce Go 6600 TE/6200 TE Version: 173.14.09

AFAICT, the Yast settings invoke the same mixer interface that alsamixer invokes. So if he says he’s already set alsamixer to 100%, running Yast isn’t going to help.

[gkuenning]

@oldcpu

I’m trying to understand this last comment. Do you mean the fixes that worked for other people, didn’t work for you? Or do you mean the people with similar problems never had it fixed? If the later, please provide the links, as I would like to help those people. I’ve searched, and can’t find threads where users were abandoned with low volume levels on their PC.

… Typically low volume level is due to a misconfiguration, often in YaST > Hardware > Sound, or in one’s mixer (typically master volume or PCM volume too low).

I think he means that lots of people have similar problems, but nobody has posted anything that would fix it for him. Or for me.

I’m now on my second Dell laptop that has absurdly low volumes. When I go to YouTube, I have to set my volume sliders to almost 100% to be able to hear at all. My desktop, in sharp contrast, plays YouTube audibly at 30% or so.

Maybe it’s just an artifact of laptop speaker systems; when I plug my laptop into headphones or an amplifier, I can get reasonable levels (of course, in the latter case I’ve got a bit of outside electronics helping me…). But I’d like to think that a volume setting of around 50% would be audible on my laptop, with 100% being in the “would you PLEASE turn that down!” range.

Most of the suggested fixes I’ve seen so far are either (1) use various tools to set the mixer levels (duh) or (2) change modules.conf to specify a driver that works only on a particular machine that’s not mine.

So yeah, there’s still a problem here.

[malcolmlewis]

@gkuenning

malcolmlewis;1846465 Wrote:
> Hi
> Have you changed the settings in YaST? Hardware->sound and then
> press the button called ‘other’ and select ‘Volume’ Set both sliders
> to 100% and hit test.

AFAICT, the Yast settings invoke the same mixer interface that
alsamixer invokes. So if he says he’s already set alsamixer to 100%,
running Yast isn’t going to help.

Hi
I suggest you create a new thread rather than tacking onto an almost 2
year old post

Have you read through the sticky?
http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/multimedia/309430-welcome-multimedia-sub-area.html

I suggest you do that and start a new thread in the multimedia area.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.2 (i586) Kernel 2.6.31.12-0.1-default
up 2:36, 3 users, load average: 0.10, 0.04, 0.10
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 190.53

[dim7]

The issue with snd_hda_intel and volume level on Asus netbook is fixed for me by adding the “options snd-hda-intel model=quanta” into /etc/modprobe.d/99-local.conf file - the sound becomes as expected

So it may be the driver issue as well, and may be all you need is to find the right option for your model

Rgds,
-Dimitri

[oldcpu]

@dim7

The issue with snd_hda_intel and volume level on Asus netbook is fixed for me by adding the “options snd-hda-intel model=quanta” into /etc/modprobe.d/99-local.conf file - the sound becomes as expected

So it may be the driver issue as well, and may be all you need is to find the right option for your model

Thanks for sharing your solution.

Some comments on it …

“quanta” is a specific model option associated with an “ALC269” hardware codec, and is specific to that codec. I note the prefered openSUSE place to put the line “options snd-hda-intel model=quanta” is at the start of the /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf file, and not a 99-local.conf file.