2010/4/8 Nicolo' Chieffo nicolo.chieffo@gmail.com
I'm sorry but I found out that I gave you wrong values of "amixer -D pulse": I just discovered that when I lower the alsa master volume, in some occasions the PCM volume goes to 99%, so now I will put it to 100% and check the pulse volume again.
0 dB = 65536 [100%] -3 dB = 57520 [88%] -6 dB = 52057 [79%] -12 dB = 41034 [63%] -24 dB = 26090 [40%] -48 dB = 10151 [15%]
So again, the only problem is that -48 dB IS mute, but it's not declared as mute. This is the real issue.
For AC97 codec , both Master and PCM are hardware volume controls
Register 02 - control the stereo master volume Register 18 - PCM out volume
But on HDA , PCM is most likely a software volume control just like pulseaudio volume control