Vlc audio problems

[yperalmtz]

Has anyone had audio problems when playing movies in VLC after the update. is not all movies but some have a very low sound. Adjusting the volume to very high and very low helps, but next time I lower the volume it just happens again. ???

[deano_ferrari]

To start with, check VLC Tools > Preferences > Audio and report back with current settings.

Also check that audio normalisation isn’t enabled perhaps.

[deano_ferrari]

If that doesn’t help check the volume widget in your desktop environment to make sure “flat volumes” isn’t impacting with this application.

[yperalmtz]

I installed tumbleweed again and the error persists, it’s not a problem with the audio on the PC, the audio is heard well when you play video with VLC both before installing the codecs with Packman and after installing it and it is not in all the files … some are heard well … and others too low or you hear the sound high and the voices are not understood, it happens with some type mkv or mp4, with . avi it ​​does not happen. VLC recently installed and testing it before installing codecs and after installing them, as well as resetting to its default values ​​​​gives the same result … all audio on the PC works good

[deano_ferrari]

So, a codec-specific issue then?

[alexsec]

@yperalmtz

The main thing that has made vlc known is that it is self dependent. This means that it doesn’t matter whether the codecs from packman are installed or not. vlc will not use them. It uses its own codecs which get installed when vlc is installed. I remember when I was using two other distributions, vlc was the only player that could play all media files even if the system’s codecs were not installed and the other media players were giving codec xxx is missing error messages.

I’m sure the same thing happens on Tumbleweed too, unless vlc is installed differently here. I can see there are two codec specific vlc files though.
vlc-codec-gstreamer and vlc-codecs.
vlc-codecs is installed from packman though.

@deano_ferrari can probably confirm whether vlc needs system (or packman) codecs on TW or not.

If it doesn’t, you could compare vlc’s audio output with another media player’s audio output. I use mpv too for example. mpv uses packman’s codecs and playing your movies with both players will show you if there are any differences between them.

For example, there are instances where movie clips show a black screen on my system, if they’re played with vlc, but play excellently with mpv. This probably proves that the two media players use different video codecs. The same thing probably happens with audio codecs too.

[yperalmtz]

no, volume just 90%

[yperalmtz]

I don’t know much about this because I’m an average user, but I think it must be something with the codecs. I tried cpn mpv, vlc, flatpak, vlc with and without packman, and the same result. Some videos are heard well, while others only have music and conversations, as if it were muted, only the background music is heard, or sometimes not even the music, just very low, but there is audio in the normal system.

[yperalmtz]

i made this script with IA to rescan hardware and suggest driver: it suggest kernel-firmware-intel , sudo zypper in kernel-firmware-intel solved the problem in a fresh install of tumbleweed.
`#!/bin/bash

echo “ Detectando hardware PCI y USB…”
lspci -nnk > /tmp/hw-pci.txt
lsusb > /tmp/hw-usb.txt

echo “ Analizando drivers en uso…”
grep ‘Kernel driver in use’ /tmp/hw-pci.txt | awk -F’: ’ ‘{print $2}’ | sort -u > /tmp/drivers.txt

echo “ Verificando paquetes instalados…”
zypper se -i kernel-firmware-* | awk ‘/^i/ {print $3}’ > /tmp/firmware-installed.txt

echo “ Sugiriendo paquetes de firmware…”
declare -a to_install=()

while read -r driver; do
case “$driver” in
ahci|i801_smbus|nvme|pcieport|xhci_hcd|skl_uncore)
echo “ $driver no requiere firmware externo”
;;
mei_me)
if grep -q kernel-firmware-intel /tmp/firmware-installed.txt; then
echo “ kernel-firmware-intel (ya instalado)”
else
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-intel”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-intel”)
fi
;;
i915)
echo “ kernel-firmware-i915 (ya instalado)”
;;
iwlwifi)
echo “ kernel-firmware-iwlwifi (ya instalado)”
;;
realtek|r8169)
echo “ kernel-firmware-realtek (ya instalado)”
;;
snd_hda_intel|snd_sof_pci_dev)
echo “ kernel-firmware-sound (ya instalado)”
;;
amdgpu)
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-amdgpu”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-amdgpu”)
;;
radeon)
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-radeon”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-radeon”)
;;
nouveau|nvidia)
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-nvidia”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-nvidia”)
;;
brcm*)
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-brcm”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-brcm”)
;;
ath*)
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-ath10k / ath11k / ath12k / atheros”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-ath10k” “kernel-firmware-ath11k” “kernel-firmware-ath12k” “kernel-firmware-atheros”)
;;
qcom*)
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-qcom”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-qcom”)
;;
qla*)
echo “ Sugerido: kernel-firmware-qlogic”
to_install+=(“kernel-firmware-qlogic”)
;;
*)
echo “ Driver desconocido: $driver — revisa manualmente si requiere firmware”
;;
esac
done < /tmp/drivers.txt

echo -e “\n🧹 Limpieza…”
rm /tmp/hw-pci.txt /tmp/hw-usb.txt /tmp/drivers.txt /tmp/firmware-installed.txt

if [ ${#to_install[@]} -gt 0 ]; then
echo -e “\n📦 Puedes instalar los paquetes sugeridos con:”
echo “sudo zypper install ${to_install[@]}”
else
echo -e “\n✅ No se requieren paquetes adicionales de firmware.”
fi
`

[yperalmtz]

Update on the problem, apparently it was fixed but no, this fixed it permanently: it plays fine with VLC --aout=alsa. The problem is in the default audio output, probably using PulseAudio or PipeWire with a configuration that omits the center channel (where the voices usually are). Therefore, the definitive solution is to change the audio output to ALSA.

[dazzleman]

Hi. Since early last week I had noticed some problems with audio in VLC. My symptoms were loud music but no voices. I don’t think I’ve ever had to configure VLC much in the two years I’ve been using this install, and certainly I have not configured recently.

So, Audio - Stereo Mode was set to Original. I changed it to Stereo and it temporarily (until application reload) fixed the problems. This led me to believe the problem is the movie files with surround sound are playing the wrong channels for my stereo speaker setup.

So, Tools - Preferences - Show All settings - Audio - Stereo Audio Output Mode was set to Unset. I don’t know if it was always like this or was changed in a recent update.

For now, I’ve changed it to Dolby Surround, and the videos that I have tried have all sounded correct. I guess the kde audio widget takes the vlc output and mixes it down to stereo for my setup.

Hope this helps.