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#1 2008-08-06 02:11:12

mr_chapendi
Member
From: Vanderbilt University, TN
Registered: 2008-08-06
Posts: 3

Erratic Volume Control on a Dell Inspiron 9400/E1705

I decided to bite the bullet and move on from Ubuntu to Arch on my laptop, and I've been figuring out the snags fairly steadily without much more than lynx or epiphany.  Unfortunately, I've hit a problem I can't seem to fix.

After installing alsa-utils, I successfully played the test file.  I thought my sound was fine - it worked great under Ubuntu (except for PulseAudio woes) so I thought I was golden.  After installing GNOME, I decided to install VLC and watch a video from TED I had downloaded (on designing computers, actually) and noticed that my multimedia buttons on the front of the laptop didn't work when the video started playing at 'OH MY JESUS MY EARS ARE BLEEDING' volume.  So, I used xmodmap to map the keys to XF86AudioPlay, XF86AudioMute, and so forth.  I started playing the video again and began fiddling with the buttons to test them out and... they are really screwed up.  Mute seems to work OK (if slightly delayed) but the Volume Up causes seemingly random increases in volume in randomly chosen speakers - sometimes the left, sometimes both, sometimes the right.  Worse, the increases are miniscule, as are any decreases from Volume Down - it's still nearly at exploding-nuclear-warhead loud.  I decided to see if alsamixer had the same problem, and it does when adjusting 'Master' volume but not so much when adjusting 'PCM.'  I read on an Ubuntu forum that people with IBM T61's whose buttons erroneously controlled 'Mic In'  managed to go into the gnome sound control panel and only select 'PCM', fixing their problem.  This doesn't seem to affect me - the only way I can adjust the volume smoothly is by tweaking 'PCM' and 'LFE' in alsamixer.

Any ideas?  Ask me for any info you would like and I will happily provide it.

(I'll rant about the play/pause button not seeming to effect VLC if I get the volume figured out...)

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