Workaround For Ice1724-Based Soundcards' Muted Left Channel Problem
I've got an excellent M-Audio Revolution 5.1 sound card, and everything's fine with it under Linux but two things:
- Headphones output doesn't work
- On boot, the front left channel is muted, though any mixer app indicates, it's level is restored.
The first problem seems to be a major bug, but it doesn't feel so critical for me, I do not use speakers, so I plug headphones into Front jack and enjoy the sound.
The second is not that serious, but terribly irritating. The volume restores on both channels when you try to adjust it, but I'm sick of adjusting it every time I boot my Linux box. This issue applies to all Revo 5.1 and 7.1 cards and probably some others ice1724 (Envy24/HT) chip based cards.
Tonight my sickness of this issue reached it's apogee, so I created a small workaround for it. I haven't touch ALSA sources and have no idea about how it actually works, so my statements and explanations could look lame for ones who are more familiar with ALSA. The solution is Gentoo-specific, but I guess, it could be easily applied to any distro.
It seemed that ALSA didn't set volume correctly for my soundcard.. hmm... from the first try, let call that so. So, I edited /etc/init.d/alsasound file, putting
amixer set PCM 90%
inside the restore() procedure. It worked after reboot, I was happy. But on the next reboot, left channel was muted again. Shit.
I tried to run
amixer set PCM 90%
in console then and was unpleasantly surprised: it didn't work. Left channel was still muted.
Ok, I suspected that ALSA checks if it should actually do something when adjusting volume level, and if current (assumed by driver) level is the same as requested by user, it does nothing. This command worked:
amixer set PCM 80%
So, finally I made the following changes to /etc/init.d/alsasound:
in function restore(): added two lines
amixer set PCM 8%
amixer set PCM 9%
before
alsactl -f "${alsastatedir}/asound.state" restore ${cardnum} \
The to different values ensure that ALSA will HAVE to actually set the volume.
This updated file survived 4 reboots already and both channel are working. Yes, it's the dirty hack, but it's beta better than nothing, because this bug is known for 4 years so far and still (as of ALSA 1.0.14) not fixed.
Review: PureBlogging.com
Sad thing, ReviewMe rules force me to mention this is a paid review. Why? No, I love getting money for doing something. I could just do it for free if I came across PureBlogging on my own. The point is that I didn't. I found it among offers at ReviewMe. Actually, if I've found I'd just subscribe to it's feed and tell you nothing. so hail ReviewMe!
So, what's PureBlogging? It is a community of authors writing about blogs and blogging. What? Yes. Yet another blogging blog for bloggers, right. There are thousands of them already. Why should you bring your attention to it? I didn't say you should.
I only say that this site, though looking ordinary wordpress-mu blog, could get enough of my attention. There are so many bloggers writing about how cool they are (and even more – writing about how cool is John Chow is), but I liked this site. Not that or another.
I can list you the site's weaknesses, like menu sometimes covering a little piece of navigation and ad block, or irritating “Share and Enjoy” links to 17 (seventeen!) social networking, or bad-looking (wrong color) orange stuff in the header, or completely useless “Meta” section is sidebar (we're all sinners), but that doesn't matter, I got pleasure reading it.
I can also list the site's advantages, even though they also don't matter:
- Excellent ad placement. There are large ad blocks, but non of them look too big or not at it's place. Even if you won't find anything new to you in their posts, look at how the ads are placed. Great work.
- Nice WP theme. And a nice customization of this theme. Love their headlines and link hovers. However, the acronyms are useless and look ugly inside the links: none od their readers need explanation of whats RSS or URI
- Thoughtfully designed sidebar. Items that should be on top are on top. The ones that should be on the right, are on the right. I'm still stuck with the layout of my own sidebar, so I'm jealous.
- The content. Yes! They got it. No breaking news, no unique ideas (what idiot would share really unique know-how?), but interesting and easy to read. That's why I read them. I'm not that interested in monetizing blog, but loved Blogging Basics series by Roberta Ferguson (she seems to be hard rock fan, and I liked that, too).
- Links. I rarely post any links here, and it's not that good. They post “Weekend Links” regularly, and I should acquire that idea.
Maybe it's all not true and I am mistaken, but for now I like that site and think it's a great place for “advanced-beginner” bloggers. I'll tell you what does that mean on day, now I'll just mention we're all advanced beginners and wish you good night.
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