volume levels

[Tim]

On Fri, 2012-05-11 at 15:24 +0100, Ian Malone wrote:
> But for the OP, couldn't you just make 11 louder? Actually, it's a
> serious question, because it might be that your card's mixer isn't
> correctly handled in ALSA (I had this problem with early Pulseaudio).
> Might be worth getting onto the alsa-user at lists.sourceforge.net list
> and asking about it.

The greater-than 100% volumes allow digital amplification (the computer
processing the sound), to deal with under-recorded audio (too quiet).
Not something that you'd, normally, want to do.

Normally, sound card mixers give you 0% to 100% control of the audio
going in, so that something like a wave file with a recording at the
absolute maximum level it can be recorded at, will play at the maximum
level that the audio hardware can re-produce.  If you tried to boost its
audio above 100%, you'd get shocking distortion.

It's better that such boosting be done as a deliberate over-range
adjustment, as and when needed (to cope with poor recordings).  Rather
than let the volume controls go above 100 without warning.  I've
certainly had my ears hurt when turning up the volume too far, without
any hint, and then played a normal sound file.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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