[alsa-devel] only 1.00 dB of playback volume change

[Takashi Iwai]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2019 05:44:31 +0100,
Robert M. Riches Jr. wrote:
> 
> (I sent this first to alsa-user and was instructed to send it to
> alsa-devel, as well.)
> 
> With a new OS installation on a pre-existing machine, some of the
> USB audio devices now have only 1.00 dB of playback volume
> adjustment, which of course is not enough to be terribly useful.
> 
> The affected USB devices show up as "Audio Advantage MicroII" in the
> output of "aplay -L".  From LSB, they show up as these:
> 
> Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0d8c:0103 C-Media Electronics, Inc. CM102-A+/102S+ Audio Controller
> Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0d8c:0103 C-Media Electronics, Inc. CM102-A+/102S+ Audio Controller
> 
> I just installed Devuan Ascii on the machine.  It's running kernel
> 4.9.0-8-amd64 and alsa-utils version 1.1.3-1.

It's a very old kernel.  Please try more recent kernel.  Some fix for
this chip was already merged a few months ago.


thanks,

Takashi


> Doing "amixer -c 1
> contents" or "amixer -c 2 contents" shows this for playback volume:
> 
> numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Volume'
>   ; type=INTEGER,access=rw---R--,values=2,min=0,max=255,step=0
>     : values=0,0
>       | dBminmax-min=-1.00dB,max=0.00dB
> 
> and
> 
> numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Volume'
>   ; type=INTEGER,access=rw---R--,values=2,min=0,max=255,step=0
>     : values=77,77
>       | dBminmax-min=-1.00dB,max=0.00dB
> 
> It looks like I'm running kernel 4.9.0-8-amd64 and alsa-utils
> version 1.1.3-1.
> 
> Using alsamixer to run the controls from end to end, I cannot
> perceive any difference in volume level.
> 
> In contrast, the other device I use (either HDA Intel or HDA NVidia)
> has around a 60dB range according to amixer, and running the control
> in alsamixer from end to end has a huge range of gain.
> 
> Previously, the exact same hardware was running Debian 7/Wheezy and
> then Slackware 14.2.  With both those operating systems, the USB
> sound devices had a very adequate volume control range, certainly a
> whole lot more than 1dB.
> 
> Being as the USB sound devices are the ones my wife uses, I'd be
> extremely grateful if somebody could point me a to way (if one
> exists) to a usefully greater range of volume control.  Any
> suggestions?
> 
> Assuming this qualifies as a bug, what channel should I use to
> report it so it can be queued to be fixed?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Robert
> _______________________________________________
> Alsa-devel mailing list
> Alsa-devel at alsa-project.org
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
>