Faint sound with Gluglug X60
I'm very happy with my Gluglug X60. And it works very well. Sadly, although the initial mails were very quickly replied to, my last set of questions went unanswered. So I am going to ask you, as I run Trisquel.
From the online documentation[1] the laptop known as ThinkPad X60 has:
Chipset is AD1981HD
Intel High Definition Audio (Azalia) compatible
One 0.5watt internal speaker (mono)
16-bit and 8-bit stereo playback and recording
Microsoft DirectSound Ver9.0c or later supported
Volume up, down, and mute buttons
1/8" audio in/out jacks:
One for mono microphone with the phantom power.
One for stereo headphone output
[1] http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-62845
The internal speaker is useless. I can't hear it with everything maxed out. Now, if I hook up some sensitive headphones I can vaguely hear the words of a song. So it's working. And the graphs are showing it's working. But I can't watch a movie or hear someone speak. Am I the owner of a damaged sound card or is there something I can do about it?
Pop open a terminal and input
alsamixer
Make sure the channels aren't muted, especially Master. Marking MM at the bottom of a slider stands for channel muted, press m to toggle. Of course also check the volume is not zero, arrow keys change volume and channels.
There is a mixer for pulseaudio which is what you see in the normal graphical user interface. Below that is ALSA which also has a mixer and then comes the actual hardware as far as I know.
Glad to hear you like the X60 besides this issue.
Already done that. Went one step further and installed VLC which has better software amplification than the supplied Totem. It's somehow louder, still unusable as you have to guess most of the normal talk and only shouts are clear. So sound's broken. :(
В 23:41 +0100 на 31.01.2014 (пт),
name at domain написа:
> The internal speaker is useless. I can't hear it with everything
> maxed out.
The internal speaker is monospeaker. It is almost useless anyway. :)
The docking station has stereo speakers which are also low-quality
but acceptable.
I know it is obvious, but have you tried the hardware volume control
buttons? I haven't installed Coreboot on my X60 yet, but my
observation is that the hardware volume control and the software one
are two separate things. If you have the hardware mixer at its lowest
value and the software mixer at top, the result is exactly what you
describe. I usually keep the hardware volume control above average and
use the software mixer.
> I know it is obvious, but have you tried the hardware volume control
buttons?
Sure. They don't work. And Mr. Rowe hasn't answered my mail since I got the parcel. So I don't know if it's my one laptop or is it a general issue. I incline to say it's a broken one as there is no mention in any review I could find about this issue. Surely somebody might have noticed. Or the stuck pixels. Or the chipped box.
The hardware audio buttons are between the Esc and Blue 'ThinkVantage' button at the top righthand part of the keyboard area.
The next paragraph in my reply looks interesting too. How about you?
Hmm, the hardware buttons work on my Gluglug X60 but only when a audio or video file is playing. Also, VLC was installed by default on the laptop I received.
Weird. I have totem and installed vlc myself. And the three buttons don't have any effect. Not even on the visual side.
So you mean you can hear sound of your Gluglug X60?
Problem solved!
Mr. Rowe quickly answered one email. The hardware buttons DO work. But they are separated from the software system. So there was no sense of looking for a change on the sound bar. Together, both hardware buttons and volume applet hurt my ears through the headphones.