Arch Linux

winston-yallow

Member

Registered: 2024-06-13

Posts: 1

Audio cuts off completely when volume is less than 20%

Issue:
As soon as I set my volume below 20%, the sound is cut off.

General Setup:
Standard arch install, updated just now, using wireplumber/pipewire for audio.
I have a USB mic that also has a headphone output with direct monitoring (t-bone SC 420 USB). It registers itself as alsa device and provides both a source as well as a sink when using the default "Analog Stereo Duplex" card profile (it has a built in 3.5mm phone connector for headphones). The headphones automatically monitor the mic on the hardware side.

What I have tried so far:

as mentioned in pipewire troubleshooting (wiki.archlinux.org):

api.alsa.ignore-dB = true

also this which I found via a similar issue (gitlab.freedesktop.org):

api.alsa.soft-mixer = true

and finally this from the pipewire volume guide (gitlab.freedesktop.org):

channelmix.min-volume = 0.0

For all the above, I restarted pipewire each time and also tried all combinations of these options.

I found a partial fix by changing the card profile from output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo to output:iec958-stereo+input:iec958-stereo (any other profile with digital output has the same effect). However, this introduces another issue: Normally the device adjusts the mic monitoring volume by the volume set for the sink. If the digital profile is selected, this does not work. Instead the hardware mic monitoring is at 100% all the time which is way too loud. So it seems like the digital profiles do not work well with this hardware.

Question:
Does anyone have ideas or tips what I could try next? Any command outputs that could help in troubleshooting?
Not sure if helpful, but here is the output of "pactl list cards" for this device (gist.github.com).

PS: Is there no way to have inline code/monospace text? New to these forums, and the bbcode guide only mentions multiline code blocks.

Last edited by winston-yallow (2024-06-13 16:35:55)