R?mi Cardona wrote: > Richi Plana a ?crit : >>> Is there any way to test what is causing this and if it is PulseAudio? >>> Is there a simple way to override PA and play audio via ALSA >>> snd-hda-intel drivers? >> Alright, it MAY not be PA. I tried playing music from a virtual console >> using oss as the output device and it still sounded horrible. >> >> One thing I did discover, however, was that when I turned up the Master >> volume setting and minimized the PCM volume setting, the audio quality >> improved tremendously. There seems to be some kind of attenuation going >> on when PCM controls are used. Why that is, I've no idea. > > Try to use alsamixer to set the PCM level to 0 dB or bellow. On my > laptop, this level is around the value of 75%. > > My take on this is that the PCM control allows to amplify the signal > beyond reasonable levels (ie above 0 dB). If pulse is the !default in alsa configuration then remember to use -c 0 argument to alsamixer to get the mixer for the hw rather than the pulse plugin's mixer. Also as pulse 0.9.7+ suspends the device (e.g. lets other apps use it directly) you can just use e.g. mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0 file.wav Col
