Re: [gentoo-user] alsamixer and pulseaudio - which is at fault?

[Corbin Bird]

On 12/29/2016 07:21 AM, Mick wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> My sound has been behaving erratically for a while now, probably since
> pulseaudio started being shipped with various desktop applications.  This is
> what I am talking about:
>
> Sound level undesirable
> ==============
> Kmail pops up a warning and the sound level is 100%.  The first time.  On the
> second warning when it happens a couple of seconds later, the sound level is
> back down to normal levels, say 55%.  Without me interfering with any audio
> settings.
>
> Some time later another warning pops up and this time the sound may be normal,
> a second warning a couple of seconds later may be back to 100%.  It appears to
> me as if sound levels generated by dekstop/application warnings are adjusted
> dynamically on the fly and at will, but not my will ...
>
> Non-KDE applications, e.g. Pidgin bleep at top volume when IMs are
> sent/received.  Adjusting their volume thankfully sticks, at least for the
> desktop session in question.
>
>
> Alsamixer
> ======
> Running alsamixer shows:
>
>  Card: PulseAudio
>  Chip: PulseAudio
>
> with a single Master bar for adjusting the volume.  Selecting F6 shows Sound
> Card set to (default), with 'HDA Intel MID' and 'HDA ATI HDMI' below it.  When
> I select 0 for 'HDA Intel MID' I get all my familiar alsamixer settings back
> including Master, Headphones, Speaker, PCM, Mic, etc.
>
> Adjusting these allow me to arrive at sane volume levels as used to be the
> case in the past.  However, the annoying thing is these settings do not stick
> between reboots.
>
>
> On another laptop with a different audio card, things are even stranger.  The
> card pops/crackles at boot time, but all sound is dead unless and until I run
> alsactl init.  Then if the sound gets quite loud, e.g. the other side of a
> Skype call raises their voice above a certain level, all sound is lost until I
> run alsactl init again.  This is becoming tedious to say the least.
>
>
> Have you noticed anything similar to either of the above problems ?  What may
> be causing these problems and are there any fixes/workarounds?  I honestly
> can't recall sound ever being such a pain on my systems.
>

Link :
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA

The link above is a good way to start. ( troubleshooting as well )
Gentoo has a boot shell script that does the "alsactl init" and shutdown
for you. ( media-sound/alsa-utils )
Just be sure you also take a look at "/etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf" and
make the required changes there as well.