Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

grim-reaper · 2021-08-29 15:58:47

[grim-reaper@archlinux ~]$ pactl list sinks
Sink #0
	State: RUNNING
	Name: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo
	Description: Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
	Driver: module-alsa-card.c
	Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
	Channel Map: front-left,front-right
	Owner Module: 7
	Mute: no
	Volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB,   front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
	        balance 0.00
	Base Volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
	Monitor Source: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor
	Latency: 40635 usec, configured 40000 usec
	Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY
	Properties:
		alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
		device.api = "alsa"
		device.class = "sound"
		alsa.class = "generic"
		alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
		alsa.name = "ALC257 Analog"
		alsa.id = "ALC257 Analog"
		alsa.subdevice = "0"
		alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
		alsa.device = "0"
		alsa.card = "0"
		alsa.card_name = "HDA Intel PCH"
		alsa.long_card_name = "HDA Intel PCH at 0xb459c000 irq 146"
		alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
		device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1f.3"
		sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card0"
		device.bus = "pci"
		device.vendor.id = "8086"
		device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
		device.product.id = "06c8"
		device.product.name = "Comet Lake PCH cAVS"
		device.form_factor = "internal"
		device.string = "front:0"
		device.buffering.buffer_size = "352800"
		device.buffering.fragment_size = "176400"
		device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
		device.profile.name = "analog-stereo"
		device.profile.description = "Analog Stereo"
		device.description = "Built-in Audio Analog Stereo"
		module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
		device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
	Ports:
		analog-output-speaker: Speakers (type: Speaker, priority: 10000, availability unknown)
		analog-output-headphones: Headphones (type: Headphones, priority: 9900, not available)
	Active Port: analog-output-speaker
	Formats:
		pcm

[grim-reaper@archlinux ~]$ pactl list sink-inputs
Sink Input #0
	Driver: protocol-native.c
	Owner Module: 9
	Client: 2
	Sink: 0
	Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 44100Hz
	Channel Map: front-left,front-right
	Format: pcm, format.sample_format = "\"float32le\""  format.rate = "44100"  format.channels = "2"  format.channel_map = "\"front-left,front-right\""
	Corked: no
	Mute: no
	Volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB,   front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
	        balance 0.00
	Buffer Latency: 1004897 usec
	Sink Latency: 32884 usec
	Resample method: copy
	Properties:
		media.role = "music"
		media.name = "Spotify"
		application.name = "Spotify"
		native-protocol.peer = "UNIX socket client"
		native-protocol.version = "35"
		application.process.id = "958"
		application.process.user = "grim-reaper"
		application.process.host = "archlinux"
		application.process.binary = "spotify"
		application.language = "en_US.UTF-8"
		window.x11.display = ":0"
		application.process.machine_id = "0ac8fa6d6f7b4946b09da8a4d95f9fa3"
		application.process.session_id = "1"
		application.icon_name = "spotify-client"
		module-stream-restore.id = "sink-input-by-media-role:music"

seth · 2021-08-29 16:03:07

seth wrote:

V1del wrote:
if you bypass pipewire and play to the ALSA device directly ALSA is louder than if the card is managed by pipewire?
You wrote:
not only with pipewire but also with pulseaudio.
seth wrote:
Did you try w/ only PA (and w/o pipewire)?

Ie. is the sound indeed muzzled w/ PA instead of PW?

grim-reaper · 2021-08-29 16:07:06

Yeah I compared the same song side by side with spotify and mpv(via ALSA). Even under pulseaudio the sound seems muffled. Actually my friends have hp pavilion gaming laptop and they use Arch linux and Gentoo linux and they too face the same problem. And I have had this problem in PoP OS and Manjaro linux as well. Do you thing it could be something related to the linux kernel??

And in gentoo linux my friend also noticed a sharp increase in loudness using the method you suggested.

Is there any method to start spotify and a browser using only ALSA????

Last edited by grim-reaper (2021-08-29 16:14:23)

seth · 2021-08-29 20:53:22

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pulseaudio-dummy/
No idea whether spotify will play ball here.

grim-reaper · 2021-08-30 06:36:27

No it didn't work. I removed pulseaudio packages and installed apulse and pulseaudio-dummy. And then ran the command:

apulse brave

apulse spotify

spotify alsa

.
No difference in sound level.

Last edited by grim-reaper (2021-08-30 06:36:56)

seth · 2021-08-30 06:58:18

Suspiciously brave and spotify are both electon/blink/chromium applications… (and I'm currently pissed at webdev clickers anyway ;-)

How's the volume for "mpv -ao pulse thunderstruck.mp3"?
How's the volume for eg. (unvetted) https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/spotify-qt/ ?

brave --disable-volume-adjust-sound

Fished from https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-c … -switches/ - no idea whether that's it.

Last edited by seth (2021-08-30 07:04:29)

grim-reaper · 2021-08-30 08:13:47

seth wrote:

How's the volume for "mpv -ao pulse thunderstruck.mp3"?

Exactly the same as the alsa command with mpv!!!! I compared them side by side. No difference. Does this mean that the apps are imposing a restriction on volume????

I tried with spot-client as spotify-qt could not play songs on it's own and had to have spotify running in the background. Spot-client had the same volume as the mpv and alsa command or mpv and pulse.

The brave command didn't work though. I tried some other commands like -alsa-output-device and -alsa-input-device. Neither worked though. No change in volume.

Last edited by grim-reaper (2021-08-30 08:15:03)

seth · 2021-08-30 08:26:01

Does this mean that the apps are imposing a restriction on volume????

chromium/blink/electron seems to, yes… but I've no idea how to mitigate that
Is firefox affected?

V1del · 2021-08-30 08:43:34

Interesting development. You are absolutely certain that the sources you are playing (e.g. check the distinct volume slider on e.g. a youtube video or relevant equivalents on spotify) is at full blast? I can't say I've directly compared but I wouldn't say I've noticed a loudness difference between chromium and windows here. What I can tell you is that chromium's pulse integration does not inherently sync the volume mixer, so it's very much possible that a pulse tool will show 100% but the actual source you are playing has a lower volume configured.

grim-reaper · 2021-08-30 09:45:16

Seth wrote:

Is firefox affected?

Yeah and qute-browser as well.

V1del wrote:

You are absolutely certain that the sources you are playing (e.g. check the distinct volume slider on e.g. a youtube video or relevant equivalents on spotify) is at full blast?

Yeah those are maxed out.

V1del wrote:

What I can tell you is that chromium's pulse integration does not inherently sync the volume mixer, so it's very much possible that a pulse tool will show 100% but the actual source you are playing has a lower volume configured.

So how would I check the real volume and how would I increase it??

V1del · 2021-08-30 10:04:29

I would have checked the relevant volume slider on a youtube video/whatever else you're using here. If these are maxed then I'm also somewhat at the end of my line of suggestions, and if it's something affecting firefox and chrome then it might even be some agreed upon web standard or something. Which wouldn't really explain the disjoint in comparison to Windows.

grim-reaper · 2021-08-30 11:24:54

V1del wrote:

if it's something affecting firefox and chrome then it might even be some agreed upon web standard or something.

Yeah I guess.

Anyways thank you guys for your help and replies. I'll make arrangements for an external speaker. I think my sister has one.

Anyways, do keep this thread open so that some one can add something if they find a solution.

seth · 2021-08-30 16:04:15

It would also not explain why spotify is affecteed.
The commonality *was* chromium/blink/electron and qwebengine build on that too, but FF doesn't fit into that pattern.

What webpages do you test in the browser? Youtube?
What about https://scummbar.com/mi2/MI2-CD5/MI2_01-Opening.mp3 ?
You can also download and play it locally w/ mpv for comparism.

icar · 2021-08-30 20:31:02

How many physical speakers does the laptop have? These harman/kardon systems with ALC2XX are notorious for their bad support on Linux. They also often are 4-speakers setups: two firing under the laptop and two firing to your face and they usually have LPF and HPF respectively, which the reverse engineered driver doesn't take into account. This could very well mean that you notice a lower volume: for example, a 5kHz signal would need to be fired from the front facing speakers, but the generic driver sends it equally to both pairs of speakers, loosing roughly half the power on the particular frequency.

grim-reaper · 2021-09-02 05:46:33

seth wrote:

What about https://scummbar.com/mi2/MI2-CD5/MI2_01-Opening.mp3 ?

This had the same loudness in browser as with mpv and alsa. I downloaded it and tested it with browser simultaneously.

seth wrote:

What webpages do you test in the browser? Youtube?

Not much. Udemy and youtube. Both have low volume.

icar wrote:

How many physical speakers does the laptop have?

It has 2 speakers on both sides of the laptop. No front firing speakers though.

I'm sorry for the late reply. Got a bit messed up in college assignments. Didn't check the forums.

seth · 2021-09-02 06:08:23

So it's not even the browser process, it's the webservice?
Did you try to download a video w/ youtube-dl and check whether it's actually just your testcase video?

grim-reaper · 2021-09-02 07:28:47

seth wrote:

Did you try to download a video w/ youtube-dl and check whether it's actually just your testcase video?

Yess. I downloaded a song and played it. Compared side by side using vlc media player and mpv/alsa. Both sounded exactly the same. But when played the same video from Youtube, it has very low volume. Tried this with several other songs. Same results.

seth · 2021-09-02 08:11:16

Ok, last straw: does youtube have access to your microphone?

grim-reaper · 2021-09-02 08:17:05

No, youtube doesn't has access to microphone in both brave or google chrome.

My speakers play really well when playing via VLC media player/mpv. Although I can't download udemy videos. That sucks.

Last edited by grim-reaper (2021-09-02 08:20:28)

seth · 2021-09-02 13:56:40

Have you tried whether youtube-dl can? (udemy is an example in the manpage…)

nb. mpv can leverage youtube-dl to play urls and allows "ytdl-raw-options" to pass options to youtube-dl (for passwords, quality selection etcetc.)

Last edited by seth (2021-09-02 13:58:01)

progandy · 2021-09-02 15:20:53

youtube uses "loudness normalization" (to about -14 LUFS) and on videos it deems "loud" it lowers the maximum volume. You can see that in pavucontrol and try to set the firefox tab back to 100%. Maybe that works a bit different on windows?

https://productionadvice.co.uk/stats-for-nerds/
https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/l … nd-youtube
https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/

To disable it:
Chromium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta … bpmffnemjb
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/a … ed-h264ify

Edit: Even when youtube claims no normalization is done and the tab volume is at 100%, the volume is lower in firefox than mpv (HP Spectre x360). Interesting.

Last edited by progandy (2021-09-02 17:44:39)

grim-reaper · 2021-09-03 17:13:11

progandy wrote:

To disable it:
Chromium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta … bpmffnemjb

I disabled loudness normalization in spotify and applied the extension. Now the audio level seems to be at decent level. But why does it works well without these additions in Windows???

seth wrote:

Have you tried whether youtube-dl can? (udemy is an example in the manpage…)

I tried that but it threw errors at all my attempts.

Last edited by grim-reaper (2021-09-03 17:13:54)

Arch Linux

#26 2021-08-29 15:58:47

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#27 2021-08-29 16:03:07

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#28 2021-08-29 16:07:06

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#29 2021-08-29 20:53:22

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#30 2021-08-30 06:36:27

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#31 2021-08-30 06:58:18

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#32 2021-08-30 08:13:47

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#33 2021-08-30 08:26:01

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#34 2021-08-30 08:43:34

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#35 2021-08-30 09:45:16

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#36 2021-08-30 10:04:29

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#37 2021-08-30 11:24:54

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#38 2021-08-30 16:04:15

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#39 2021-08-30 20:31:02

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#40 2021-09-02 05:46:33

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#41 2021-09-02 06:08:23

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#42 2021-09-02 07:28:47

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#43 2021-09-02 08:11:16

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#44 2021-09-02 08:17:05

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#45 2021-09-02 13:56:40

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#46 2021-09-02 15:20:53

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

#47 2021-09-03 17:13:11

Re: Sound produced by laptop is very low in Arch as compared to Windows 10

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