I have a VT8233 AC'97 (VIA motherboard). sound chip, when i installed mandrake 9.0 all configuration looked good but when i try to play any audio file the volume is very low! and the volume bars are in their max level. how can i turn up the volume? i have a windows xp partition and all works!

please help me.

I've had the very same problem with the very same Linux Distro before . After hours and hours on the internet after a solution, I realised that would be better to buy a new cheap Linux compatible sound card. I've found a new one from Zoltrix, with 3D Sound support and 4 channel speakers Karaoke for 15-17 US$ (even stands in the box: M$ Win9x/NT, Linux and DOS, which is hard to see nowadays Linux when you buy something...). It was a great investiment. I just don't fight Linux hardware support anymore. I'm 23 years old and half of my hair is grey thanks to Linux lol.

Well, if buying a new sound card is not your option, hope someone else will help you.
Good luck.

Try running aumix from the console and make sure that the PCM volume level is turned up. For some reason this volume is almost always muted or low.

After increasing this level, be sure to save it (File|Save) so that the next time you reboot you won't have to do it again.

I hope that this helps.

You are lucky to have any sound coming out of the chip at all.

I have had snags with AC97 under both mandrake 8.2 and 9.0, it seems that it either works or it doesn't (yes I have had some noise but?????).

I have ended up going for a soundblaster live! 5.1 digital (about £40) which worked straight out of the box, was auto detected etc etc (though I did disable onboard sound in the bios just in case it conflicted).

It has been the more satisfactory solution - either that or you will spend hours trying to suss it out - search for post's by me and you should find a couple of threads that may have some idea's and maybe even answers

regards

John

I hadn´t solved the problem, i installed the alsa 0.90 rpm and alsa utils rpm but the problem wasn´t solved.

I have that chip on my MSI KT3V motherboard, but with the volume sliders right up the volume is way too loud from the front panel connectors (headphone socket connected to the front-audio pin headers on the motherboard) my headphones bottom out and the signal clipps, and music playback was a little to fast. I'm using my trusty Creative SB16 PCI card for now (Ensoniq ES1371 chipset)

-Taiyo