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nawitus

Member

Registered: 2009-05-11

Posts: 112

[ALSA] PCM/Master mixer controls control the wrong sound card[SOLVED]

I have two soundcards, onboard one HDA Nvidia Conexant CX20549 (Venice), and the external one Terratec Aureon 7.1 USB. I want to use the external one. The onboard card was set as the default card. I fixed this by adding "options snd slots=snd_usb_audio" to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf. The issue was fixed. However, PCM and Master controls are not created for the Aureon, but they are created for HDA Nvidia. This means most programs cannot control sound volume. Sound itself works fine, even 5.1 through optical.

Screenshots of the cards in alsamixer:
Aureon: http://i53.tinypic.com/ws0b3a.png
Hda Nvidia: http://i53.tinypic.com/or4c2h.png

nawi ~ $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: USB [Aureon 7.1 USB], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: CONEXANT Analog [CONEXANT Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: Conexant Digital [Conexant Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
nawi ~ $ cat /proc/asound/devices 
  2: [ 1- 1]: digital audio playback
  3: [ 1- 0]: digital audio playback
  4: [ 1- 0]: digital audio capture
  5: [ 1- 0]: hardware dependent
  6: [ 1]   : control
  7: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
  8: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture
  9: [ 0]   : control
 33:        : timer
nawi ~ $ cat /proc/asound/pcm 
00-00: USB Audio : USB Audio : playback 1 : capture 1
01-00: CONEXANT Analog : CONEXANT Analog : playback 1 : capture 1
01-01: Conexant Digital : Conexant Digital : playback 1
nawi ~ $ cat /proc/asound/modules 
 0 snd_usb_audio
 1 snd_hda_intel

I found interesting info about older Aureon cards: "Like other USB devices, Terratec audio devices do not have hardware mixers. You need to create a custom .asoundrc file, using the softvol plugin, to provide software level mixing." I attempted to add a software mixer ( http://alsa.opensrc.org/Softvol ), but I didn't notice any changes (the softvol control was not created at all).

Blacklisting HDA Nvidia by adding "!snd_hda_intel" to the MODULES-array in /etc/rc.conf was not succesful. Maybe /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf can blacklist modules, but I don't know the syntax of that configuration file. If I rmmod snd_hda_intel, and restart alsa, I get only 1 card but not PCM/Master for Aureon. Therefore, blacklisting seems useless.

alsa-info.sh: http://pastebin.com/mJ7hQbj2

Last edited by nawitus (2011-07-12 23:57:49)

nawitus

Member

Registered: 2009-05-11

Posts: 112

Re: [ALSA] PCM/Master mixer controls control the wrong sound card[SOLVED]

Added some information, but still having this problem. Pretty damn annoying problem.

RedoXPS

Member

Registered: 2010-04-09

Posts: 4

Re: [ALSA] PCM/Master mixer controls control the wrong sound card[SOLVED]

I don't know how to fix your issue, but if you want to blacklist the hda-intel module at boot, just add: "backlist snd-hda-intel" on a new line in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf. It's the new syntax (explained on the homepage of this website, in the News).

According to the screenshots you made, you have the PCM control, but you can't enable/disable it.

If you want to disable the internal soundcard, you can also try to disable it in the BIOS, then your usb soundcard will appear as the only registered card, it may help... But I think that if the controls don't show up in alsamixer, it may just be because the driver doesn't implement them and you'll have to turn to a software solution like softvol (It's just a guess, but I have the same kind of problem with my Realtek ALC662 chipset with which I can't select the 4ch mode (only 2 or 6))

I got an USB soundcard (a cheap one) with which I don't have any PCM or Master, only "Speaker", and Audacious works just fine, using the "Default" mixer.

If you want to list all the available settings: "amixer scontrols"  or "amixer scontents"

Good luck

nawitus

Member

Registered: 2009-05-11

Posts: 112

Re: [ALSA] PCM/Master mixer controls control the wrong sound card[SOLVED]

Thanks for the tips. Blacklisting the hda-intel module doesn't help. I think the PCM control for the external usb card is "capture", so it doesn't make any difference to listening volume. My bios doesn't support blacklisting the internal soundcard for some reason (I didn't find any option for it at least).

Yes, Audacious works too, and sound in general works. Howver, I have to change volume from each application, and I also cannot use the volume sliders on my laptop or the external USB card. Also, since the volume is so loud, I have to listen at about 7% volume. This makes it really difficult to adjust volume in YouTube for example (1 pixel of the volume slider corresponds to a major change in volume level..).

EDIT:
Found a working softvol config at last:

pcm.softvol {
        type softvol
        slave {
                pcm "dmix"
        }
        control {
                name "Master"
                card 0
        }
}

pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "softvol"
}

There remains one problem: I cannot change the Master volume slider using amixer:

nawi ~ $ amixer -c 0 set Master 2dB+
amixer: Invalid command!

I can change other volume sliders with the same command. I need to use amixer to bind my volume hotkeys on my laptop.

EDIT:
Found a fix: use "amixer set 'Master' 5+"

EDIT:
Created a wiki page for this sound card: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Te … Aureon_7.1

Last edited by nawitus (2011-07-13 14:25:18)