Ubuntu Multimedia :: USB Soundcard Volume Controls With Laptop Volume Keys?
Oct 29, 2010
I've got my xubuntu 10.10 install just about perfect on a little acer aspire d250, apart from a small sound useability issue: In the interests of simplicity and resource usage I removed pulseaudio. After a bit of fiddling I got it so that my USB soundcard (ProDac) is recognized and automatically set as the default soundcard when plugged in. Any sound applications automatically use the USB sound if it present, no need to around with pulse. The only problem is that my netbook's volume control keys still only control the master volume of the inbuilt soundcard, and have no effect on the usb sound. Does anyone know of a way to change which sound device these keys actually effect? I'd like to write a little script so that when the usb device is detected the keys are remapped.
I put together a step-by-step guide of how I installed openSUSE 11.1 on my ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005HA Netbook. I planned on going back and re-installing using my own guide to check for mistakes, etc. but I never seem to get around to it, so I'll just post what I have and let you guys comment if you run into issues. Side notes: This guide assumes you want to wipe out Windows XP and run only openSUSE. Sorry, I'm a Gates hater.
I still haven't figured out how to configure the function keys support for volume controls and wireless. I'm hoping the "eeepc kernel module" mentioned by malcolmlewis here: Suse on my Asus 1005HA - openSUSE Forums will do the trick.
I'm running squeeze (last updated today), and everything has been working great. There is only thing that would simplify my life minutely..Anybody know how can I have the volume buttons on my laptop change the "pcm" channel volume rather than "master"? If they could control pcm, then I could adjust the volume coming out of my headphones or my computer speaker (both controlled by pcm, but not master...seems strange to me) with just one click.I tried to find this info online, but all results seem to refer to an older version. The simple "click here, set this" solution no longer is possible.
Debian Squeeze 6.0.0 on a Thinkpad T43, sound volume is not synchronized between the laptop volume buttons and GNOME's Volume Applet. So if I turn the volume all the way down with the physical buttons, the volume applet may still indicate 75%.I did not have this problem in Debian Lenny. Pressing the volume buttons used to show a volume bar on the screen, as did pressing the mute button.
In Intrepid Ibex, I was using the left Super key as Volume Down and the right Super key as Volume Up, because it was just so convenient.
However when I go to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" window in Karmic, it doesn't let me assign the Super keys to anything. I mean like, I can use the Super Keys along with other keys, but not by themselves.
Is it somehow possible to use the Super keys for Volume Up and Volume Down in Karmic?
How do i change the channel gnome-volume-control controls? I want it to control pcm but it controls master front. There used to be a setting right in the sound preferences but i think it disappeared with the 9.10 upgrade or at least i can not find it anymore. I've looked on the at gnome alsa mixer while changing the volume and master front gets controlled while pcm is always set to max. The problem with this is that master front does almost nothing to change the actual volume.
If i control pcm with the alsa mixer the volume range is fine. I've found a manual for gnome-volume-control on [URL].en and the pic there actually looks like i remember it looking. But i can not get to that screen. What i have looks completely different. Its a window with the tabs Sound Effects | Hardware | Input | Output | Applications. But there is no sight of any channel settings and the only slider there does the same as the applet one.
Volume up, volume down and mute keys on the keyboard don't control the volume any longer.They worked before. Hitting the keys brings up a progress bar widget with the volume level unchangeable, set at 0% (which is not accurate at all).It looks like the key mappings or key bindings are working, but there is a disconnect with actual functionality. The volume cannot be changed or muted anymore from the keyboard.
This worked just fine in KDE on Fedora 11 before upgrading KDE components yesterday with Yumex. I am now using KDE 4.3.2 I don't think that it's a coincidence that it stopped working after doing an update. I updated the kernel and nVidia drivers too, but this problem exists when I went back and tested with the previous kernel, so I don't suspect the kernel upgrade. No info in Xorg.conf about the keyboard. Is there a setting that I am missing?
Sound works just fine. I can listen to whatever source I like. This is not a problem with the sound drivers as far as I can tell.I just want to be able to control the volume with the keys on my Logitech Illuminated Keyboard, model Y-UY95. Is anyone else experiencing this?I can adjust the volume with Kmix 3.5 or GNOME Volume Control V2.1
I recently install a Debian 8.0 Jessie on a Laptop Dell latitude E6540 with gnome 3.14+3. But the problem is that it doesn't recongnize my multimedia buttons, I tried some methods but I didn't get results.
$showkey --keycodes volume up -- 115 volume down -- 114 volume mute -- 113
[Code] ....
When I reassinged the keys on Settings>Keyboard>Shortcuts to F7, F8 and F9 it works, but when use the keys volume up, down and mute It doesn't show anything.
The same happens with Fn + Brightness keys, in this case it worked the first time but then stop to work I don't know why..
I'm running Kubuntu 10.10 32 bit on an old DFI KT600AL motherboard based system using the onboard VIA 3058 AC97 audio (because it supports front panel audio connections and none of the add-in PCI soundcards I have do). I have an old Gateway/STB TVPCI TV tuner card (mainly wanted the FM radio part to work) hooked up to the cd audio connector on the motherboard because the digital audio over the pci bus apparently isn't supported for this card (neither is the onboard analog mixer on the tv tuner card, I had to hack a CD-ROM audio cable and solder it to the audio outputs of the tv tuner module on the TV tuner card). When I use the master channel as the master channel (selected in Kmix) then as one would expect it affects the output volume of all other audio playing on the system except that which is being handled by the PCM channel. On Windows the PCM channel was also affected by the "Volume Control" slider such that ALL volume levels were reduced when moving the slider. I'm hoping someone can help me figure out how to make it work like this on Kubuntu.
First off I should warn you that I (like many users of older hardware that is not properly supported under PulseAudio) have uninstalled PulseAudio (because it's garbage) and am using Alsa to manage my audio hardware. I would think that there would be some way to do this using the 'amixer' application to add the PCM channel as a component of the 'Master' channel so that when the volume is turned down using the 'Master' channel control it will affect the PCM channel too (at least the output to the speaker jack, not necessarily the capture or mix volume though), but I'm not really any good at doing things from a terminal window and the options for the amixer command kind of confused me.
I used Ubuntu 10.10 (64 bit) on IMac i7. As far as, I remember, after installing Pulse-Audio Equalizer, for each restart of the system, after login screen, system sets volume to maximum value. What can I do?
since using 10.04 I have a big problem with my usb headset (freetalk everyman)
1. Problem: I cannot regulate the volume of the phones (output) anymore with gnome-volume-control. By default the volume is set to 100% which is way too loud. When I set it under 100% there is no sound at all. Values over 100% work.
2. Problem: The X server is freezing iregulary when I connect the headset and disconnect it, Magic SysRq works. I checked Xorg.0.log and found out that it recognizes the usb headset as keyboard:
I am struggling with a problem with the volume control... when i try to adjust the volume with the sliding bar i can not do it. If i put the scrollbar to the 0 position, it is muted. when i move it to anywhere else, i get the full volume. From other programs like vlc, i can adjust the volume with no problem.
My volume control seems to have only three settings: TOO LOUD, VERY QUIET, OFF. If I adjust the Master volume slider from the Panel, only about the right 1/8th has any effect and if I slide it past about the 95% mark, I get no sound at all. At the far-right end of the volume control, I get total volume. It's basically like the slider only has any impact in the top 5% of it's space. Below 95% of the slide, there is zero volume.
It's so drastic, that one tap down of the volume button on my keyboard kills the sound (because it nudges the slider past that 95% mark). This happens in the Audio settings, etc., system-wide. If I adjust the volume for an individual app from within the app (MPlayer, for example) it behaves exactly as expected (that is, app volume works smoothly, it's just master volume that has this issue). I have run through most of the "obvious" things-- I'm wondering if I broke something by installing the extra KDE packages to get Amarok to work.
I have a keyboard with media buttons on it which work fine. I do have a question about the 2 buttons for lower and higher volume. Pressing the higher volume button increases the volume with a maximum of 18 steps, where step 0 = mute and step 17 is maximum. I wonder if it is possible to increase the number of steps to make the volume change not so big per step. Now I have one step which is a bit too loud, and one step lower is not loud enough.
how to set at least my headphone/lineout socket precisely to -15dB at boot up? If I knew how to make amixer commands permanent, I wouldn't be re-raising the issue
The Gnome GUI volume control is fine in normal circumstances but to set it accurately requires a bit too much fiddling, IMO - now if someone were to adjust the programming so a dB readout accompanies slider movement, rather than as a pop-up after adjusting the slider, 'twould be more ergonomic, IMO.
Newer versions of both distributions are using the new pulseaudio volume control (I'm not referring to pavucontrol but the main volume control accessible via the volume icon in the panel). However, even though both distros' versions have the identical interface, they clearly do two different things. I've searched for this topic before and have come up with nothing; makes me wonder why no one else seems to have an issue with this.
For Fedora (12 and up) the main slider for the sound card's volume does just that, although the sliders for individual applications use the same "scale." If I drag an application's slider higher than that for the sound card, the "main" slider moves along with it.
In Ubuntu (Lucid and later) the main slider is the same as Fedora's, but the individual applications are scaled differently. Dragging an individual application's slider all the way to the right (100%) sets the maximum volume of this application to that of the sound card, whatever that happens to be at the moment.
In this respect, Ubuntu's individual sliders are relative to the (arbitrary) value set for the sound card, but Fedora's individual sliders are "hard-wired" to the main slider. I'm wondering if it is possible to make Fedora's volume control behave like Ubuntu's, i.e. is there a configuration setting, or is this designated in the source code? I'm sure there is a heated debate over why things are this way in Fedora, however with the new pulseaudio systems, the minimum value for the main slider for my sound card is pretty loud and this makes most audio unlistenable in Fedora, at least through headphones without an on-board volume control.
I recently installed Mepis (Lenny I believe) on my vaio n320 and was extremely excited that my Fn keys seemed to work right off the bat. I could adjust brightness just fine, but when I attempted to control the volume, nothing happened. I can adjust the volume from the mixer, but no Fn key.
Got this new motherboard and it's running 11.4 of Opensuse and it works great. Even got the DVI working with the monitor with help of instructions I found here. However the sound is poor and the volume controls just as bad. According to the motherboard docs it has THX Tru Studio sound pro, a Intel H67 (B3) chipset. Six audio ports. And the chipset integration by Realtek ALC837. I have tried to find this information in the sound setup with no luck. What was selected was the Intel model (no other specifics was found). According to the Alsamixer it says HDA Intel PCH and the card and chip is set as PulseAudio. What should the sound card be set to other than Intel?
There is a very strange problem I've been having. When I enable either Caps Lock or Num Lock the media controls on my keyboard cease to work. I have Googled this one to death but found nothing. This problem existed in Xubuntu 9.10 and now still exists in Xubuntu 10.04. The keyboard I use is a Logitech Elite Keyboard. I would love to be able to use the Caps Lock and Num Lock without the worry that I am disabling the media controls
I'm having trouble with my keyboard functions on my netbook (eeePC 1005HA running squeeze/sid - specific build being the one available on December 23rd 2009 - hasn't been updated since installation) - specifically, some of the function keys seem to be off - i.e. when pressing Fn+key, only some actually work. The specific ones I'm having trouble with are: Fn+F10 (mute)Fn+F11 (vol. down)Fn+F12 (vol. up)
As far as I can remember, they've never worked; at first I thought it wouldn't be an issue for me, having the volume panel, but the more time goes on, the more annoying it's becoming. Also, as it was a M$ machine at purchase, it has a Windoze key on it, which I'd like to configure to actually do something useful - preferably to open the main menu, if possible - but have so far failed to find any guides on how to do it. (Have Googled on multiple occasions, to no avail.)
Is there a way to default volume to 100% in the terminal with gnome-volume-control-applet or any other program? I am setting up a dedicated Zsnes machine which boots into Fluxbox but the volume is muted by default. There isn't a man page for gnome-volume-control-applet.
When I log into Gnome the volume is set to 100%, but Fluxbox is always set to mute.
I'm using 10.04 now and it runs ok, except one strange thing in the Volume control applet. Sometimes, when I click on the volume slider, it moves up. Even if I try to slide it down, it moves up on every click. The same when I click left of it - it keeps moving up! This is very annoying at night when the music gets loud and wakes everybody. It happens with or without Compiz turned on
Sound is my #1 issue on F11. Most of the time I can't change the system wide volume setting by pressing the function keys on my laptop (the volume indicator doesn't even show up). When that happens (and I havent't been able to find out why and under what conditions that happens) the volume applet on my panel also becomes useless. Useless meaning that I can slide the slider up and down with no effect on the audible volume. I can still change the volume within the individul applications (rhythmbox, totem, ...) with success. Adjusting the volume via gst-mixer or pavucontrol does also works as expected. It's really just the volume keys and the panel applet that refuse to cooperate.
About this system (pretty standard intel_hda, no problems with F10)code...
It seems that when I adjust the volume with the volume wheel on the side of my notebook, the OS messes up. Nothing is clickable, I cannot type anything, in order to get a working computer again I have to hard reset it.Why is this happening? I have never experienced this. I have a Toshiba Satellite that I recently installed Ubuntu on.
I don't know much about lvm and I've managed to screw up a drive. I had a 500GB drive with FC14 on it and I wanted to copy over a load of data to my new 1TB that was replacing it. I set up my new install the same way as the old...including the same volume names (error number 1 I think) I successfully mounted the old/500GB drive (using vgscan and vgchange -a y etc.) using a laptop (running FC13) and an external hdd cradle. I could access the files I wanted but this wasn't the machine I wanted to copy them to (I was doing this while waiting for the install to finish on the new drive).
When I tried the same process on the new install I found that having two lvm with the same name meant I couldn't mount the external one. So I opened the disk utility (palimsest) and was going to change the name of the old volume group but it wouldn't let me do that. I then thought maybe I could get away with just changing the name of the partition where the files were and maybe I could add it to the mounted group or something so I changed it to lv_home2. This changed the name of my new/1TB lv_home to lv_home2 as well. So thinking that wasn't the answer I just changed the name of the new lv_home2 back to lv_home.
From that point on I haven't been able to see the old drives partitions (the new volume group still works so far). I has a physical volume but the volume group and volume names are gone from view. When I try to vgscan on my main computer or the laptop I had it working on earlier I get:
I'm rearranging a bunch of disks on my server at home and I find myself in the position of wanting to move a bunch of LVM logical volumes to another volume group. Is there a simple way to do this? I saw mention of a cplv command but this seems to be either old or not something that was ever available for linux.
