Arch Linux

Wild Penguin

Member

Registered: 2015-03-19

Posts: 383

Volume too low with SOME applications only

Hi,

I have this weird vbug which led me to think my headphones are broken, but this is not the case.

It seems some applications have too low volume. It seems like audio is compressed / capped at somewhere around 5-10% volume, but only for some applications. The per-application stream has been set at 100%. I'm using pipewire and KDE plasma.

Possibly related threads: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=287573 and https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=290433

It's peculiar, that this has something to do with output device; curently, I can only reproduce this with headphones. System notifications, some web pages trough Firefox are on ok volume (a flash-based web audio stream, stand-alone music) - however decoding any video, from YouTube (with the same browser!) or MPV will result in a too low volume.

The bug was suddenlt triggered when listening to a video recording of a lecture.

Removingthe headphones, all applications have correct (similar maximum) volume. Re-inserting headphones, some applications are gapped at this some (too low) maximum. It is (a theory of mine) as if some part in the audio handling change is confused about maximum bit depth and all audio is compressed to a lower (maximum) bit depth. I can barely hear the almost inaudioble audio and it does sound compressed (as if headphone jack is not properly making contact; but this is at the same time when some applications have clear, crisp and normally loud audio!).

Restarting wireplumber and clearing the cache as outlined in the other thread linked above had no effect.

Another theory: possibly some surround mode is activated (erroneusly), despite having only stereo (headphones), and some wrong channel (such as LFE?) is fed to the headphones?

Any idea how to debug this further?