Sound volume

[TheBouleOfFools]

When I had Slack, sound was perfectly happy and I was able to change the volume through my mostest favoritest mixer, Xmixer (please stop laughing). Gentoo came in and kicked ol Slack out and now sound is very sad. It's only about half as loud as it was with Slack, reasons being I can't set the volume for the life of me. With Slack, I could tell Xmixer to run off of /dev/mixer and the volume would change and life was good. With Gentoo (running devfs, but I don't think that's the problem), I have tried /dev/mixer, /dev/mixer1/, /dev/sound/mixer, and /dev/sound/mixer1 but non of them have allowed me to change the mixer volume. In XMixer, where the numbers usually go up or down when you move the slider, the numbers just stay at a constant 69 or 100 (if I'm using /dev/mixer or /dev/sound/mixer they're at 100, if it's /dev/mixer1 or /dev/sound/mixer1 they're at 69. They're both the same loudness). I have a SBLive! using the emu10k1 module compiled through the kernel (2.4.18, although I've tried 2.4.17 and 2.5.5 with no avail). I've also tried ALSA, which was installed by defaul with Gentoo, however I was not able to get any sound. I believe the reasons for that are that ALSA set the volume to 0 and I wasn't able to change it, however these are just my guesses so any help would be appreciated. Trying to play files while using ALSA gave me no errors, so I assumed that everything was working except the mixer level.

[bwkaz]

If you are using Alsa, the command-line program alsamixer can be used to set up mixer levels. Run it from a terminal.

That doesn't help if you have OSS currently enabled, but if not...

If you want to preserve your mixer settings over reboot, put alsactl store somewhere in your shutdown script(s), and then alsactl restore somewhere in your startup script(s).

HTH

[TheBouleOfFools]

I tried alsamixer but still no sound at all with alsa. When I run alsa I have the following modules installed (as show by /proc/modules):
snd-pcm-oss 18176 0
snd-mixer-oss 4896 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-card-emu10k1 2176 1
snd-pcm-plugin 14160 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-emu10k1 20608 0 [snd-card-emu10k1]
snd-rawmidi 9952 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-pcm 29760 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-pcm-plugin snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 8704 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-emux-mem 1184 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-ac97-codec 22880 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-mixer 26568 1 [snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-ac97-codec]
snd-seq-device 3740 0 [snd-card-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd 32544 1 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-card-emu10k1 snd-pcm-plugin snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi snd-pcm snd-timer snd-emux-mem snd-ac97-codec snd-mixer snd-seq-device]
soundcore 3556 5 [snd]

When I have alsamixer running and trying to use XMMS to play sound, if I mess with the volume in XMixer, alsamixer shows the change in PCM volume, but there is still no sound output.

[ 16 March 2002: Message edited by: TheBouleOfFools ]

[TheBouleOfFools]

I tried getting the xmms-aalsa sound output driver, and that did jack also. I've come to the conclusion that alsa blows, but I still don't understand why I can't change my volume using normal kernel sound.

[Toi Mak]

If you like xmixer (http://www.hdk-berlin.de/~rasca/xmixer/), why not just download and install it?

:confused:

[TheBouleOfFools]

I am using xmixer, but the point is it's not changing the volume. Nothing does, and I don't understand why.

[bwkaz]

Does the SB Live default to digital output mode, and you're using analog speakers?

Or does it default to analog mode, and you're using digital speakers?

I'm not sure how to check this, at all, but I do know that that causes problems sometimes.

[ 16 March 2002: Message edited by: bwkaz ]

[Toi Mak]

Originally posted by TheBouleOfFools:
<STRONG>I am using xmixer, but the point is it's not changing the volume. Nothing does, and I don't understand why.</STRONG>

Oops, I misunderstood... sorry.

Did you add yourself to the group that owns those mixer devices?

[TheBouleOfFools]

Well I checked out permissions, and everything is set right but I found out I can set pcm and 0gain volume as root, and only 0gain volume as my user. I'm still unable to set master volume. The device I had to use was /dev/sound/mixer1

[bwkaz]

What happens after you chmod 0666 /dev/sound/*? Can you set master volume?

Beware that the permissions will probably be reset next time you reboot, because you're using devfs. Unless, that is, your distro saves all permissions on shutdown and restores them on bootup.

[TheBouleOfFools]

Well hrmph I reboot and now root can change master volume too. What's going on here?!