On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 22:41 +0100, Tom Gundersen wrote:
On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Norbert Zeh <nzeh@cs.dal.ca> wrote:
Things I observed (on Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, Arch...so it's not distro-specific) were way too low input (mic) and output volumes even when setting the volume controls to 100%. I really wanted to use PA because it offers something ALSA does not: simultaneous audio streams from different applications (i.e., when firing up Windows in a VirtualBox, it does not hog my audio). So I googled for hours, read through forum posts, etc. and all I could find were hacks that either didn't work at all or resulted in the right volume but at completely unacceptable distortion levels.
So, I'm almost certain that I am doing something wrong with configuring my audio setup using PA,
This sounds like a good, old-fashioned bug, I don't think you did anything wrong in your setup. Most likely your sound driver (ALSA) is exporting the wrong dB information to PulseAudio which means that PA's volume calculations will be nonsense. Please file a bug against ALSA.
Since the sound device is ok when using ALSA only, the +4dBu vs -10dBV information or any ratio dB to fader position or what ever you mean, must be somewhere provided correctly by ALSA. If such a dB issue should be the cause, than I suspect PA pulls this information from the wrong place. What happens, when using Arts or any other sound server? In case of doubt file a bug report to ALSA and PA. IIRC the sound device works correctly since years for ALSA, just when using PA there's distortion. Is it reasonable to assume that there's a bug for ALSA? Perhaps an user error? If the device should support +4dBu and -10dBV, than the user perhaps missed to choose the correct level. Nor ALSA neither PA does know what equipment is connected to the audio IOs.