Low Audio Volume on VIA Chipset

[fibres]

Hi

I have an Asus Pundit P2-AE2 Mini barebones system which Im using as a network boot media director.
It has the following chipsets

North Bridge: VIA K8M800
South Bridge: VIA VT8237R

Audio is a ADI AD 1888
6 Channel Codec

I have everything working great on this except for the audio is very quiet. No matter what I set in the mixer in kd the audio is very low. I have to turn my reciever upto full to be able to hear anything. When I switch to another input on the reciever the volume is deafening.
Any help on how to sort out this volume issue would be appreciated.

Regards

[totallymaxed]

Hi

I have an Asus Pundit P2-AE2 Mini barebones system which Im using as a network boot media director.
It has the following chipsets

North Bridge: VIA K8M800
South Bridge: VIA VT8237R

Audio is a ADI AD 1888
6 Channel Codec

I have everything working great on this except for the audio is very quiet. No matter what I set in the mixer in kd the audio is very low. I have to turn my reciever upto full to be able to hear anything. When I switch to another input on the reciever the volume is deafening.
Any help on how to sort out this volume issue would be appreciated.

Regards

You could run the AVwizard again and make sure that the default volume is set correctly there (check if the audio volume is ok in the Wizard). We have similar hardware to you here and I can say that we have noticed this problem.

[CrafyZA]

I had the same issue but fixed it. All my volumes was set to 100% and still it was very soft.
What you needd to have a look at, is alsamixer. it is a program you have to run in a new terminal window. set the main volume to about 75%. If you set it higher than this you will loose quality. let your amp do the rest.
You can set every thing from there. Gain, bass trebble etc etc etc...

[chrisbirkinshaw]

I had the same issue but fixed it. All my volumes was set to 100% and still it was very soft.
What you needd to have a look at, is alsamixer. it is a program you have to run in a new terminal window. set the main volume to about 75%. If you set it higher than this you will loose quality. let your amp do the rest.
You can set every thing from there. Gain, bass trebble etc etc etc...

You'll actually get the best audio quality with all the controls at 100% and your amp turned down, as otherwise you are not maximising the SNR ratio of the DAC. With a 24-bit soundcard this should not ever really be a problem but with a 16-bit soundcard this is an issue.

The problem I have had is that the system keeps overwriting my alsamixer settings. I saved a snapshot with alsactl and then wrote a script which runs and reloads the config every 2 seconds. A hack, but I couldn't find any other solution.


Chris

[CrafyZA]

can you maybe send me that script. I have to set my volume in alsamixer every time i reboot.
The reason i never set my volume over 75% is because the RMS vallue for a sinus wave between 1 and -1 is always 0.707. Over that you pick up noise that is visible on a oscillator. going over 0.05 does not make a big difference. The amp volume i never take over 25% 1.) I feel too sorry for my speakers, and 2.) the neighbors will start to hate me :-)
This rule of thumb does not apply while watching TopGun. Then the speakers need to play a little and loosen up again :-D

[chrisbirkinshaw]

#!/bin/sh

while [ true ] ; do
alsactl restore
sleep 2
done