Hi guys!

I have just bought a very cheap and simple USB Sound Card (USB DAC) like this one:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22475

When I plug the sound card into the USB port, I get this normal messages in dmesg:

usb 4-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1130, idProduct=f211
usb 4-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 4-1: Product: USB AUDIO
usb 4-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: USB AUDIO as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.1/usb4/4-1/4-1:1.3/input/input11
generic-usb 0003:1130:F211.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Device [USB AUDIO ] on usb-0000:00:1a.1-1/input3
input: USB AUDIO as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.1/usb4/4-1/4-1:1.4/input/input12
generic-usb 0003:1130:F211.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10 Device [USB AUDIO ] on usb-0000:00:1a.1-1/input4
usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio

I'm receiving this messages from pulseaudio:

Oct 22 14:28:59 lampost pulseaudio[2673]: alsa-sink.c: Your kernel driver is broken: it reports a volume range from 0.00 dB to 0.00 dB which makes no sense.
Oct 22 14:28:59 lampost pulseaudio[2673]: alsa-source.c: Your kernel driver is broken: it reports a volume range from 0.00 dB to 0.00 dB which makes no sense.

I think that I'm going to open a bug on fedora or pulseaudio, but I don't know exactly if there could be any workaround to sort out this issue

Please advise

Hey mek.

Just a thought here...have you tried booting a LiveCD (such as Linux Mint, or Ubuntu) to see if it does the same thing?

I've just tried with ubuntu 9.10 and I saw exactly the same problem, thanks for the suggestion.

I doubt there is a broken module or driver. It is most likely your distribution did not include all USB sound cards or its pulseaudio configuration is not setup properly.

Assuming the module is loaded for your sound card, use alsamixer to adjust the volume of the USB audio device. If the volume can not be adjusted, you may have to create a software volume control in ALSA's LISP language which is complicated. Though if nothing is showing any settings for the sound card, your distribution probably did not include all sound modules (drivers) and you have to re-compile ALSA or your kernel to get the modules that supports your device.

Pulseaudio is just a sound server and it is not always reliable. I suggest do not use it.

Quick and dirty...

You tried a Ubuntu live-cd without any luck. What about changing distro affiliations by trying a live-cd of openSUSE, or PCLinuxOS. The was no luck either with fedora live?

"lshw" for the chip, "lsmod |grep snd" for the modules?