[alsa-devel] [pulseaudio-discuss] PulseAudio and softvol

[Raymond Yau]

>
> Hello,
> A number of users have intermittently(?) been hitting a crash in
> alsa-lib 1.0.27 [1, 2] related to the softvol plugin. I'm not able to
> reproduce this reliably, so can't find an easy way to debug/fix.
>
> However, this raises a tangential question - why do we need softvol to
> be plugged for 'front' at all? David explained to me that this is to
> guarantee the existence of a PCM control. Perhaps I don't fully
> understand this, because I'm unconvinced by the reason. Could someone
> explain/refute?

Because  alc660 codec did not has any hardware volume control on the output

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=a327b0925a1697d60ea427fe3f16821d7ef7030b