On 12/29/2016 07:21 AM, Mick wrote: > Hi All, > > My sound has been behaving erratically for a while now, probably since > pulseaudio started being shipped with various desktop applications. This is > what I am talking about: > > Sound level undesirable > ============== > Kmail pops up a warning and the sound level is 100%. The first time. On the > second warning when it happens a couple of seconds later, the sound level is > back down to normal levels, say 55%. Without me interfering with any audio > settings. > > Some time later another warning pops up and this time the sound may be > normal, > a second warning a couple of seconds later may be back to 100%. It appears > to > me as if sound levels generated by dekstop/application warnings are adjusted > dynamically on the fly and at will, but not my will ... > > Non-KDE applications, e.g. Pidgin bleep at top volume when IMs are > sent/received. Adjusting their volume thankfully sticks, at least for the > desktop session in question. > > > Alsamixer > ====== > Running alsamixer shows: > > Card: PulseAudio > Chip: PulseAudio > > with a single Master bar for adjusting the volume. Selecting F6 shows Sound > Card set to (default), with 'HDA Intel MID' and 'HDA ATI HDMI' below it. > When > I select 0 for 'HDA Intel MID' I get all my familiar alsamixer settings back > including Master, Headphones, Speaker, PCM, Mic, etc. > > Adjusting these allow me to arrive at sane volume levels as used to be the > case in the past. However, the annoying thing is these settings do not stick > between reboots. > > > On another laptop with a different audio card, things are even stranger. The > card pops/crackles at boot time, but all sound is dead unless and until I run > alsactl init. Then if the sound gets quite loud, e.g. the other side of a > Skype call raises their voice above a certain level, all sound is lost until > I > run alsactl init again. This is becoming tedious to say the least. > > > Have you noticed anything similar to either of the above problems ? What may > be causing these problems and are there any fixes/workarounds? I honestly > can't recall sound ever being such a pain on my systems. >
Link : > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA The link above is a good way to start. ( troubleshooting as well ) Gentoo has a boot shell script that does the "alsactl init" and shutdown for you. ( media-sound/alsa-utils ) Just be sure you also take a look at "/etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf" and make the required changes there as well.
