Arch Linux

mjd119

Member

Registered: 2020-05-07

Posts: 119

[SOLVED] Alsamixer sets volume to 42 after each restart

I noticed that after each restart, the audio volume is much quieter. When I open alsamixer, my soundcard has the master volume set to 42/100.
For the card "PulseAudio," the volume is 100/100, but when I switch to the "HD-Audio Generic" card with the "Realtek ALC887-VD" chip, the master volume is set to 42/100. I have to manually turn it up to 100 after I restart. PavuControl reports the volume level at 100%. Why does this happen and how to make ALSA keep the volume at 100% by default? I use a headphone amp with an analog knob to adjust the volume instead since it's recommended to keep the audio source volume at 100%.

Last edited by mjd119 (2020-06-27 01:19:12)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,376

Re: [SOLVED] Alsamixer sets volume to 42 after each restart

After changing to 100% run,

sudo alsactl store

see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … nd_Systemd as well

mjd119

Member

Registered: 2020-05-07

Posts: 119

Re: [SOLVED] Alsamixer sets volume to 42 after each restart

After changing to 100% run,

sudo alsactl store

see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … nd_Systemd as well

That seems to have solved the problem. I am marking this as solved. I was reading this section of the wiki and I'm not sure what the difference is between the command you provided and "alsactl daemon." What does it mean to have alsa running in daemon mode?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,376

Re: [SOLVED] Alsamixer sets volume to 42 after each restart

In non-daemon mode the change is read from disk once at boot, and written to disk once on shutdown. Daemon has an active daemon that updates that file continuously so it could help to restore the audio levels on a system crash or so. I don't know of many things that do actively use that file during normal runtime so doing it once means you do not unnecessarily have to have an additional program running, and there will potentially be conflicts with something like pulseaudio that does change the driver state on it's own.