I’m trying to get my speakers working in GNOME. I ran alsamixer and turned the speakers all the way up but there’s only faint sound coming out of them. I have switched the soundcard from generic Nvidia to Realtek ALC887-VD and there’s no difference, but there are more settings for the Realtek card. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Please read this: How to provide good information
and post some more information so we can see what’s really going on. Now we know the symptom of the disease, but we need some more probing to know where the origin lies…
An inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width would be the minimum required information for us to be able to help you. (Personally Identifiable Information like serial numbers and MAC addresses will be filtered out by the above command)
Also, please copy-paste that output in-between 3 backticks ``` at the beginning and end of the code/text.
P.S. If you enter a bit more details in your profile, we can also see which Desktop Environment you’re using, which CPU/GPU or Kernel, … you have without typing it every time
@nikgnomic I remember you telling me if I wanted to crank up my speakers about 2 years ago, but I was happy the way they were and as I never did any of that, I don’t know how to boost them…
You can check ALSA settings for onboard audio device
alsamixer --card=1
or post response to this command to show settings in text format
amixer --card=0
ALSA controls should look similar to this linux-hardware.org scan from another Manjaro user with the same motherboard
Check that controls for audio outputs are unmuted and levels set correctly Master, Headphone, PCM and Front
You might also need to unmute SurroundCentre and LFE even if you are not using surround sound channels
In alsamixer use ↓ and ↑ to change levels
and M to mute and unmute controls
Make sure that setting IEC958 Default PCM is [off] (or shown as [MM] muted in alsamixer)
Try all 3 settings for Channel Mode - 24 and 6
I would suspect this setting in ALSA as the most likely to cause a problem with audio level
Desktop users usually want to change Auto-Mute Mode to Disabled so the rear headphone jacks are not muted when headphones are plugged in, but this setting will only mute the speaker outputs completely and would not cause reduced audio level
If any changes are made to ALSA settings use this command so the new settings are restored when system is restarted
@Fabby What is OTOH? Do you know how to select a particular partition for swap? I made a partition on my drive labelled /dev/sdb but when I use the wiki you shared it adds the entire drive as a swap.
@nikgnomic
My also controls are horizontal and have visual bars that show the volume levels above the numbers. I have unmuted everything and tried varying levels of volume on the speakers. When they’re turned way up I can hear them faintly. I turned off auto-mute. I do not see a Channel Mode.
I did a test where I plugged my speakers into the headphone jack on the front and I had the same issue even though my headphones work through that jack. I tried headphones through the rear jack and still get regular sound. This must be a hardware issue. Thank you for all of the help and tips.
I bought new speakers recently and had the exact same issue as in this thread. I’ve looked over the internet but can’t find any solutions. Just an update. I have no idea how to fix this. When I turn the volume all the way up on my speakers it is still faint. New headphones, too, and they work fine.