[alsa-devel] bug

[Eliot Blennerhassett]

On 31/03/15 03:37, Nikita N. wrote:
> We are the devs involved in dCore porting, and that is one of our users
> report:
> http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,18225
> 
> We verified that in few of our legacy laptops.
> It didn't reproduce for every laptop, but indeed in a couple of them,
> the temperature of the speakers reached extremes levels in few seconds,
> only unplugging the AC/DC cable saved them.

This is a hardware problem, quite likely reproducible in any OS that
gives control of the

> This is a serious problem in our opinion, and we would hate to see our
> dCore reputation spoiled.
> We hate to admit, but it is *NOT* our bug, and would hate to see this
> bug reverse engineered into a virus/malware (on Linux, or other OS) and
> see ourselves blamed for it.
> So we would like to keep the incident quiet, and we are going to remove
> that thread from our forum.
> On the other side, we would expect any action from ALSA project in
> removing that tool and/or exposing the real individual/s guilty of
> writing that tool.

As Clemens has pointed out, "the ALSA project" cannot remove the tool,
as it is not part of the ALSA project.
However, probably any software that can control all the volumes is
capable of reproducing the same effect.

And in my opinion, you are blaming the wrong party here. As various
posters on your forum thread point out, blame the hardware manufacturer
or the particular user who has done something crazy and now wants to
find some other "guilty" party.

1: User setting ALL volumes to maximum (?) probably causes feedback from
microphone to speakers.   (Yes I can confirm that happens on my laptop
with mic gain set to 20dB below maximum). You can do the same on your
home stereo and blow your speakers, nobody will have any sympathy.

2: The laptop manufacturer has apparently not designed the hardware
robustly, i.e. the speakers are too puny for the maximum output of the
audio amplifier.

3: There is no way for the soundcard driver to know what the limits are,
it just exposes the controls for the user to set.

regards

Eliot