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AsA

Member

From: Milan - Italy

Registered: 2008-10-05

Posts: 46

Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

Hello,

I spent the afternoon trying to fix this issue on a Beelink SER6-P featuring a Realtek ALC897 sound card. The output level is extremely low. I also tried other live distros and the problem seems the same: only the HDMI audio is usable.
Following the wiki (link) I tried to change /etc/asound.conf to have a Pre-amp setting in alsamixer but without any luck, is it possible that I am doing anything wrong? Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks

#/etc/asoud.conf

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.ctl.card 1

pcm.!default {
    type hw
    slave.pcm "softvol"
}

pcm.softvol {
    type softvol
    slave {
        pcm "dmix"
    }
    control {
        name "Pre-Amp"
        card 0
    }
    min_dB -5.0
    max_dB 20.0
    resolution 6
}

aplay -l
...
card 1: Generic_1 [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC897 Analog [ALC897 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

AsA

Member

From: Milan - Italy

Registered: 2008-10-05

Posts: 46

Re: Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

I soon realized after posting I could not add the Pre-Amp because the configuration used card0 instead of the correct card1. Nonetheless the pre-amp is of no use. Sound clips much before getting to any reasonable volume.

Open for alternative suggestions.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,142

Re: Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

You'd want to use actual processing tools/loudness ladspa modules or so. Those can be setup with ALSA alone but is somewhat cumbersome, a much easier and intuitive approach would be using pipewire together with e.g. easyeffects or so.

AsA

Member

From: Milan - Italy

Registered: 2008-10-05

Posts: 46

Re: Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

You'd want to use actual processing tools/loudness ladspa modules or so. Those can be setup with ALSA alone but is somewhat cumbersome, a much easier and intuitive approach would be using pipewire together with e.g. easyeffects or so.

I am trying right now. In easyeffect like with pre-amp i can increase the signal but get to saturation well before I get a usable signal output I do not think an user-space solution is possible. It must be those damned realtek drivers that do not enable some hardware amplifier for the headphones as they do on windows.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,142

Re: Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

Did you check your HW options with

alsamixer -c1

some toggles for preamps and the like are somewhat hidden as  booleans/enumerations rather than a "pure" volume control.

Other than that issues here are often tied to UEFI updates, maybe check that, and/or ensuring fast-boot is disabled on Windows

AsA

Member

From: Milan - Italy

Registered: 2008-10-05

Posts: 46

Re: Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

Did you check your HW options with

alsamixer -c1

some toggles for preamps and the like are somewhat hidden as  booleans/enumerations rather than a "pure" volume control.

Other than that issues here are often tied to UEFI updates, maybe check that, and/or ensuring fast-boot is disabled on Windows

No options in alsamixer were left unturned. The computer is new and I wiped out windows without testing the headphones output. But I see online that this is also a possible issue on windows unless you install the Realtek super mega pro drivers specific for this interface.

As beelink is clueless on the issue, tomorrow I will write to Realtek directly.

erayrafet

Member

Registered: 2025-02-08

Posts: 4

Re: Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

I have the same ALC897 chip on an Asrock B650M PG Riptide. Volume is still a little low but increasing the clock from 48000 to 192000Hz improved the quality by a bit, noticeably.
The chip doesn't seem to support 32-bit yet it runs at that by default according to monitoring tools.

~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf

## Properties for the DSP configuration.
    default.clock.rate          = 192000
    default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 192000 256000 384000 ]
    #default.clock.quantum       = 16384
    default.clock.min-quantum   = 4096
    default.clock.max-quantum   = 16384
    default.clock.quantum-limit = 16384
    default.clock.quantum-floor = 32

~/.config/pipewire/client.conf & ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf
    resample.quality      = 10

These are my settings.

format.dsp 32 bit float mono audio

Or is 32-bit float something different?

Last edited by erayrafet (2025-02-08 06:48:30)

AsA

Member

From: Milan - Italy

Registered: 2008-10-05

Posts: 46

Re: Low volume on Realtek ALC897 line out and headphones

I have the same ALC897 chip on an Asrock B650M PG Riptide. Volume is still a little low but increasing the clock from 48000 to 192000Hz improved the quality by a bit, noticeably.
The chip doesn't seem to support 32-bit yet it runs at that by default according to monitoring tools.

~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf

## Properties for the DSP configuration.
    default.clock.rate          = 192000
    default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 192000 256000 384000 ]
    #default.clock.quantum       = 16384
    default.clock.min-quantum   = 4096
    default.clock.max-quantum   = 16384
    default.clock.quantum-limit = 16384
    default.clock.quantum-floor = 32

~/.config/pipewire/client.conf & ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf
    resample.quality      = 10

These are my settings.

format.dsp 32 bit float mono audio

Or is 32-bit float something different?

I am on pulseaudio wihtout pipewire atm, I tried changing bitrate and encoding from float32le to s16le but there is no impact on volume, on sound quality I cannot tell as I can barely hear anything.