Volume is either silent or very loud

[BrokenKingpin]

In Xubuntu 11.10 (and 11.04) I noticed that my sound is either silent or very loud. In the volume slider, up to 1/4 volume the sound is almost silent, and then after that it jumps to what seems like max volume. It is very annoying because I then have to use the physical dial on my speaks to change the volume, instead of being able to use the keyboard shortcuts.

Does anyone know how to fix this? I don't seem to get this on my laptop, only my desktop. I have an ASUS M3N78-VM mobo.

[BrokenKingpin]

bump.

[Toz]

Hello neighbour.

Have a look at this link for a potential solution: http://askubuntu.com/questions/15069...e-mixer-levels.

[BrokenKingpin]

Thanks for the information Toz, that does appear to be the same issue I am having. I will try the workaround/fix tonight.

[BrokenKingpin]

TOZ, that link provided a partial solution that will works fine for now. Thanks!

I set the following in ~/.pulse/default.pa

load-module module-udev-detect ignore_dB=1
load-module module-alsa-sink control=PCM

So this made it so that the PCM channel is adjusted instead of the master, which works far better. This works when adjusting the slider on the panel, but if I use the keyboard shortcuts it still adjusts the master. I worked around this by adding the keyboard short cuts to Super+UP/DOWN:

amixer set PCM 10+
amixer set PCM 10-

I tried setting the keyboard shortcuts to the media volume buttons on my keyboard, but it didn't work. Oh well, this gets me close enough to what I need.

I think the root cause is that the sound card driver is not reporting to palseaudio correctly. I will look to open a bug for this.