Terrible sound quality

Underhill · 04-01-2005, 02:07 AM

Hi guys,

I got ALSA installed. But the sound quality is terrible, compared to in Windows. I'm using Turtule Beach Santa Cruz sound card by the way.

Any ideas?

Thorium · 04-01-2005, 02:36 AM

I had a similar problem, are you using kde? Then you probably have kmix which you can use to play with the treble and bass, for my card I had to issue this command as root to get those mixer channels to do anything:

amixer sset Tone on

So do that and try lowering treble in a mixer app.

oneandoneis2 · 04-01-2005, 02:40 AM

When I had this problem, it was because every channel was at 100%. Turned them down to 80% or so, and they had a bit more 'room to maneuver' - instant improvement.

Underhill · 04-01-2005, 05:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Thorium
I had a similar problem, are you using kde? Then you probably have kmix which you can use to play with the treble and bass, for my card I had to issue this command as root to get those mixer channels to do anything:

amixer sset Tone on

So do that and try lowering treble in a mixer app.

That's the problem. No treble and bass setting on my mixer.

Quote:

When I had this problem, it was because every channel was at 100%. Turned them down to 80% or so, and they had a bit more 'room to maneuver' - instant improvement.

It helps a little, thanks. But it doesn't sound as good on my Windows.

marcheikens · 04-01-2005, 11:33 AM

Have you tried turning down the PCM volume? That will cause awful distortion if it's up too high. Get into an xterm and type aumix . Go to the Pcm line and turn it down--I usually keep it around 50-70, along with the main volume. Then I just adjust volume with my speakers' volume control knob.

Oh, and if you don't have aumix, just apt-get install aumix .

marc

Deeze · 04-01-2005, 04:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Underhill
That's the problem. No treble and bass setting on my mixer.

It helps a little, thanks. But it doesn't sound as good on my Windows.

I agree the sound system in Linux has room to grow yet. I have the same card, and it's a pity I can't take advantage of it's 7 channel hardware mixer (course if anybody knows that secret I'm all for learning). I also can't get as much volume out of my system as with windows. Well, I can make both go as loud as I can stand, but when I have my speakers set for a comfortable (really not loud) listening level in Debian, then when I boot 2k the sound is way, WAY too loud. This is with moderate (60-70%) settings in both os's for the volume controls. I'm talking literally a 25% difference in the setting of the volume knob on the speakers.

I'm all for a discussion on figuring out how to tweak up the sound system. Maybe a guru can chime in on this and give us some things to try

.

Underhill · 04-02-2005, 02:30 PM

marcheikens, done that. Thanks.

Quote:

Originally posted by Deeze
I agree the sound system in Linux has room to grow yet. I have the same card, and it's a pity I can't take advantage of it's 7 channel hardware mixer (course if anybody knows that secret I'm all for learning). I also can't get as much volume out of my system as with windows. Well, I can make both go as loud as I can stand, but when I have my speakers set for a comfortable (really not loud) listening level in Debian, then when I boot 2k the sound is way, WAY too loud. This is with moderate (60-70%) settings in both os's for the volume controls. I'm talking literally a 25% difference in the setting of the volume knob on the speakers.

I'm all for a discussion on figuring out how to tweak up the sound system. Maybe a guru can chime in on this and give us some things to try .

I'm all up for trying something new. Using software equalizer doesn't help much either (Beep Media Player, using Winamp EQF file).