On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 22:41 +0100, Tom Gundersen wrote: > On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Norbert Zeh <nzeh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Things I observed (on Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, Arch...so it's not > > distro-specific) were way too low input (mic) and output volumes even when > > setting the volume controls to 100%. I really wanted to use PA because it > > offers something ALSA does not: simultaneous audio streams from different > > applications (i.e., when firing up Windows in a VirtualBox, it does not hog my > > audio). So I googled for hours, read through forum posts, etc. and all I could > > find were hacks that either didn't work at all or resulted in the right volume > > but at completely unacceptable distortion levels. > > > > So, I'm almost certain that I am doing something wrong with configuring my audio > > setup using PA, > > This sounds like a good, old-fashioned bug, I don't think you did > anything wrong in your setup. Most likely your sound driver (ALSA) is > exporting the wrong dB information to PulseAudio which means that PA's > volume calculations will be nonsense. Please file a bug against ALSA. Since the sound device is ok when using ALSA only, the +4dBu vs -10dBV information or any ratio dB to fader position or what ever you mean, must be somewhere provided correctly by ALSA. If such a dB issue should be the cause, than I suspect PA pulls this information from the wrong place. What happens, when using Arts or any other sound server? In case of doubt file a bug report to ALSA and PA. IIRC the sound device works correctly since years for ALSA, just when using PA there's distortion. Is it reasonable to assume that there's a bug for ALSA? Perhaps an user error? If the device should support +4dBu and -10dBV, than the user perhaps missed to choose the correct level. Nor ALSA neither PA does know what equipment is connected to the audio IOs.
