Volume too low on F20 (32bit)

[Ian Malone]

On 2 June 2014 16:25, Oliver Ruebenacker <curoli at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>      Hello,
>
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 6:10 AM, Ian Malone <ibmalone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 2 June 2014 02:23, Oliver Ruebenacker <curoli at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >      Hello,
>> >
>> >   After a fresh install of Fedora 20, 32bit, and adding enough packages
>> > to
>> > watch YouTube videos, I have sound (for both the YouTube videos and for
>> > Clanbomber), but the volume is way too low, almost inaudible.
>> >
>> >   I have a volume setting widget on the lower panel and I set volume to
>> > maximum. I also set the volume to maximum in alsamixer and pavucontrol,
>> > even
>> > after setting VolumeOverdrive to true in kmixrc. I have kmix running. I
>> > removed and installed back pulseaudio to see if it makes a difference,
>> > and
>> > it seems it does not. When I start kmixctrl in a terminal, it finishes
>> > without anything happening.
>> >
>>
>> When using alsamixer are you looking at the volume for pulseaudio or
>> at the hardware mixer volume? (Use F6 to change the device you're
>> looking at.)
>
>
>   Thanks for suggesting F6. I have no idea what all these dials in alsamixer
> mean, but I rotated through all I could find with F6 and set all to maximum
> (most were already), but unfortunately I noticed no change in volumne.
>

I'd expect to see an entry in the F6 menu for any hardware devices you
have and one for pulseaudio if you're still using it.
e.g. this RHEL system shows:
- (default)
0 HDA Intel PCH
1 HDA NVidia

Where '-' is the pulseaudio entry (on my Fedora systems it call itself
pulseaudio), 0 is the onboard soundcard and 1 is the HDMI sound. I'd
then try adjusting 'master' on the hardware one. If it makes no
difference going up and down then you're not adjusting the right
mixer. One thing that can be a bit confusing is when you adjust the
pulse volume it will adjust the hardware mixer volume (because it's
better to adjust the overall level through the hardware mixer rather
than set levels in software), to get that right it relies on
information from the soundcard driver. So if that's going wrong and
you adjust the hardware mixer then the pulseaudio level then it will
undo your changes to the hardware mixer.

Further thoughts: what is your audio hardware? Have you had it playing
louder than this previously?
It might be necessary to take it up with the ALSA people if it's a
problem with the levels being set on your hardware mixer.

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk