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43615

Member

Registered: 2022-01-19

Posts: 34

ALSA mixer levels change to odd values when configuration resets

The ALSA volume levels for my integrated sound interface (Realtek ALC1220) always change to a different value when the audio configuration resets (such as on boot or when updating certain packages). In particular, the "Master" channel is set to 36 and "PCM" to 97 (as shown by `alsamixer`).

I do not use the ALSA controls directly, and therefore want them to always be on 100. When I do adjust levels in software, I use the options in KDE (PipeWire interface afaik).

The change does not appear to come from ALSA itself, since `alsactl store` / `restore` works fine. As a workaround, I autorun `alsactl restore` on KDE startup.

Do you have any ideas on where those weird config changes might be coming from? I'm not familiar with Linux audio stuff at all.

Last edited by 43615 (2024-04-19 21:11:13)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,765

Re: ALSA mixer levels change to odd values when configuration resets

wireplumber/pipewire-media-session stores your last volume state and generally intends to reapply whatever it had stored, so explicitly switch them to 100% in the pulse widget should remember and logically reapply that.

To generally override that behaviour see https://pipewire.pages.freedesktop.org/ … tings.html and set device.restore-routes = false and device.routes.default-sink-volume = 1.0 -- see https://pipewire.pages.freedesktop.org/ … s-settings for how to apply those.

43615

Member

Registered: 2022-01-19

Posts: 34

Re: ALSA mixer levels change to odd values when configuration resets

I'm not sure what you mean by "pulse widget", not using PulseAudio afaik. I had already tried wiggling the levels in the KDE settings, but that didn't change anything.

Fortunately, the suggested override works! That's a very direct way of achieving my goal and shouldn't have any side effects since I don't care about control on the ALSA layer. Thank you!

Still doesn't explain the source of the weird defaults, I'm quite curious about that.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,765

Re: ALSA mixer levels change to odd values when configuration resets

You are interacting with pipewire via pulse clients (e.g. KDEs volume widget) The value you set there should get stored and reapplied by pipewire/wireplumber whenever you change the logical sink (e.g. port switch event or so) the unconfigured default being 40% is probably to just not blow someones ears out unintentionally.