In Ubuntu under the volume settings you can increase the playback volume to 150%. I think this also existed in older versions of puppy.

I have a Thinkpad X220 which has very low volume playback, so I wanted to boost the sound.

Is there a pet, sfs or command line I can download/use which will allow me to do this in Slacko.

Thanks

Can't you do that in alsamixer?

Alex Brinister

The Mixer in Slacko allows the volume to be set upto 100%. In Ubuntu you have a switch to increase the volume to 150%.

That is what I was looking for in Slacko.

Thanks for the reply though

Do you run Ubuntu from the same computer as Slacko? If so, 150% and 100% are the same because of hardware limits. Software cannot make hardware better.

If not, then how can you compare two different computers with different sound cards? Maybe the Thinkpad has bad speakers.

Also, are you settings everything to 100% in Slacko? Master, PCM, etc?

Alex Brinister

Thanks for the reply.

My problem is fairly simple. I have the X220 laptop which has a very low speaker volume. The Ubuntu distro allows me to ramp up the volume to 150% and I can tell the difference as I can hear the payback. I think its a software feature as one of the side effects is that the speakers make a slight buzzing sound as the sound is distorted beyond its limit.

All I can tell you is that sound played on Ubuntu plays much louder. I also think early versions of puppy had a check box which allowed you to go over 100% to 150%.

Anyway I hope some one can come up with a suggestion as its a pain listening to anything on this laptop. Also I dont want to add external speakers or anything else. I wanted a software booster, any ideas?

I see. Ubuntu comes with PulseAudio. Does Slacko come with PulseAudio? Maybe if you install and configure it correctly, it will sound better.

Alex Brinister

Just tried a version. No luck. I think I am going to have a look at what Ubuntu is actully running and see if I come up with anything there.

Thanks for the tip.

In earlier versions of Puppy Linux, I am thinking of Puppy 4.2 here, the default media player had an option under the audio settings to increase the amplification to the speakers and it worked really well.
In the later versions of Puppy, all I have found is a setting called PCM that does a similar task.
But it is not the same as the amplification setting in the earlier versions of Puppy in the default media player.

This must've been in an earlier version of alsamixer. According to some reasearch, Puppy 4.2 came out around April 2009. That's around when Ubuntu 9.04 came out. 9.04 used ALSA 1.0.18rc3. Puppy 4.2 probably used the same (or around the same) version of ALSA. Currently, the stable version of ALSA is 1.0.25.

However, take a look at ys.

Alex Brinister

The amplification setting was not in alsa mixer. It was instead in gxine.
There is a settings utility as part of gxine that has the amplification control.
Hope that clarifies things somewhat.