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mkkot

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2009-12-20

Posts: 288

ALSA volume sensitivity

Hello all, I have an Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 audio card + Sennheiser HD 555 headphones. This conjunction is very, very loud. When I want to get lower volume, I do:

[mk@linux ~]$ amixer -- sset Front playback -126dB
Simple mixer control 'Front',0
  Capabilities: pvolume penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 255
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 1 [0%] [-126.00dB]
  Front Right: Playback 1 [0%] [-126.00dB]

Louder: [mk@linux ~]$ amixer -- sset Front playback -125dB
Okay, that's enough: [mk@linux ~]$ amixer -- sset Front playback -124dB

It's still 1% in alsamixer. So basically it's impossible to set volume through any graphic mixer or audacious, because gain goes immediately to 5% which is way too much. I'm thinking of taking off headphone amplifier jumper but as far as I remember when I tested both settings after buy, it didn't make a difference. Any suggestions apart of using software volume control in audacious? Thanks.

ConnorBehan

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Long Island NY

Registered: 2007-07-05

Posts: 1,359

Website

Re: ALSA volume sensitivity

It looks like the best granulatiy you can get with ALSA is 1/256. This is less than 5% so would it help to run "amixer set Front 1", "amixer set Front 2", etc?

There are also might be other channels that could control the volume more comfortably. Is one of these too high? For example on my system the gain I hear appears to be Master * PCM. So if I graphically set Master and PCM to both be 5% overall it would be like 0.25%.

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mkkot

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2009-12-20

Posts: 288

Re: ALSA volume sensitivity

Unfortunately I have only "Front" channel. I was thinking about something like changing potentiometer scale to lower units. But I guess it's a dream. I took off the jumper while cleaning PC, will see how it works now...

mkkot

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2009-12-20

Posts: 288

Re: ALSA volume sensitivity

Use with xbindkeys / khotkeys or whatever can make a global shortcut or a mouse gesture or whatever

Louder:

#!/bin/bash
#by mkkot, 15/04/2012, Public Domain
#This script can be used for precise volume level increasing in Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 Advance DE within ALSA
volume_level=`amixer |grep "Left: Playback" |cut -d ' ' -f 6`
volume_level=$[volume_level + 1]
amixer -- sset Front playback $volume_level

Quiet:

#!/bin/bash
#by mkkot, 15/04/2012, Public Domain
#This script can be used for precise volume level decreasing in Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 Advance DE within ALSA
volume_level=`amixer |grep "Left: Playback" |cut -d ' ' -f 6`
volume_level=$[volume_level -1]
amixer -- sset Front playback $volume_level