Well.... it was a slow first day of Summer, so I gave it another try and installed the 3.9.5 kernel for the 3rd time.
I found that if I went straight into Xfce I had sound. Much lower volume than before, but it worked.
However, when I changed to KDE 4.10.4, the sound, at the highest possible setting, was so low that if your ears were 12" from the speakers and you were eating popcorn you wouldn't be able to hear it. Starting KDE killed the sound for everything, i.e., if I went back to Xfce without rebooting there was no sound.

So, with gmgf's suggestion in mind, which I had tried before, I went into the ~.kde configuration files and deleted everything I could find that is related to sound, e.g., kmixer.rc, etc. Upon rebooting the system the sound returned for both Xfce and KDE, however, it is at a much lower volume
than with the previous 3.8.13 kernel. The speakers are now at about 85% and software volume control at 60% to get the same sound level as the hardware level at 50% and the software level at 40% with the previous kernel.
Either way, the sound quality is still not, in anyway, as good as in, ugh, Xp.
Unacceptable.

Installed the 3.9.7 kernel, et al., late last night. Didn't improve the sound situation. The low remains very low.
Thinking of going back to the 3.8.13 kernel.

I had the lower volume sound problem all the way from the introduction of ALSA until somewhere around kernel 3.2/3.3 where it suddenly became louder. No amount of playing with settings (including the model= settings on the driver module) helped. One thing I did notice was that at the time it started working correctly my alsamixer gained an independent 'headphones' slider to go along with the 'Master' and 'Front'. controls.

I'd keep an eye out for subtle differences like this between what you used to have and what you have on the newer kernel.
Have you compared the output of 'amixer' between the two different kernel versions? You could also try the latest alsa-lib/alsa-utils to see if they help.

You're in a better position than I was as you at least have a known working kernel and you could bisect your way to finding the commit that breaks things for you and possibly talk with the alsa devs about the regression. As mine never worked, that wasn't really an option for me.

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@cwizardone - Just for the record, if you're feeling up to it, perhaps you could go to kernel.org and download 3.9.4 and compile that instead of just using -current's kernel. I have found that the combination of the kernel, KDE 4.9.5, and the latest ALSA have made for a winning combination as far as sound goes. My sound works perfectly all the time. No fiddling with mixer settings to get the sound up to an acceptable level.

Just a thought.

Regards,

Matt

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Thanks. I'm a bit burned out on it now, but I'll definitely consider it when my attitude improves.

Interesting! Over the years, through various machines, I cannot remember seeing a headphone slider in alsamixer.


Thanks for the idea. I printed them out and compared them. The 3.9.7 kernel (and 3.9.5?) adds a "Auto-Mute Mode" to alsamixer. However, disabling it didn't solve the problem.

There are other differences.
Here is the contents of amixer for both the 3.8.13 and 3.9.7 kernels.
First, the 3.8.13 amixer,


and, below, amixer from the 3.9.7 kernel:

I don't see the culprit, but, perhaps, I overlooked it.

It has been a rainy morning so I've been tinkering with 3.9.7, again, and found if I run command line audio players *outside* of X, the volume is fine. Once I go into X, be it Xfce or KDE, the sound level is cut by at least 50%. If I open a terminal and run the same command, i.e., player and sound file, the volume is reduced to almost zero. If I logout of Xfce or KDE, the volume level returns.
Go figure....

Another rainy morning (odd for June). Tried switching versions of X, i.e., 1.14.1 vs. 1.13.4. Didn't solve anything, but it does work very well. Tried un-installing the NVidia driver, but didn't change anything either, the problem remains.

Definitely has to be a kernel bug, as reported over at Redhat.

So, I'm back to the 3.8.13 kernel and NVidia driver, and I've left the latest kernel-firmware file and X-org 1.14.1, installed. They works very well together.

HOWEVER, after going through all of this over the last two weeks and bouncing back and forth between Linux and Xp, there is no doubt the audio and video are superior in winXp vs. Linux, at least Slackware. No doubt about it. The audio, especially, is far, far superior to Linux.

I've noticed over the years that Linux printing quality has caught up with winblows. It wasn't too many years ago I could print out the same document, with color graphics in the letterhead, and the one printed in winblows was visibly superior. Not anymore. The copy printed in LibreOffice is every bit as good.

Scanning still sucks! Just tried it, again, over this last weekend and compared it to the same thing scanned in winblows and, as before, the result done in Linux was visibly inferior in so many ways. To get around that I long ago installed Xp into VirtualBox and do all my scanning that way.

Discouraging that here we are, 12 years after the release of Xp, and we are still playing catch up. BTW, I'm not saying Linux should be like winblows, but one should be able to accomplish the same tasks with as good, if not superior results in Linux. Afterall, it is the superior operating system and Slackware is the best of the best.

I just scanned a bunch of stuff for the first time in eons (I *was* a highly-paid DTP *expert* in a previous incarnation...) and I had no disappointments, using a cheapo canon usb unit. I don't have any windows installs to compare to tho'...so, obviously, ymmv....


cheers,

OK. Here are two examples. Both were done at 300 dpi with no other changes to the default settings. The darker of the two was done in XSane. The lighter was done in winblows using the HP software. The winblows/HP version is a very close copy of the original.

Attached Thumbnails

   

The 3.9.9 kernel does not solve the sound problem. Back to the 3.8.13 kernel.

In the wee hours this morning I complied and installed the 3.10 kernel. It was the first time in over 10 years... probably closer to 15, that I've complied a kernel and, the thing worked (to my surprise ).

Unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem.

If I boot straight to the command line and run, "play whatever.wav vol 1" the volume is loud enough to
knock me off the chair, as the hardware volume on the speakers is set up for use in Xfce or KDE.

It would appear to be a conflict somewhere between the kernel (or kernel module) and Xorg.

Regardless, it is back to the 3.8.13 kernel.

Just a sidenote on the audio issue... I should have remembered.

SlackBuilds.org does still carry the OpenSound drivers, so you might want to try it with them if the Kernel ALSA drivers aren't playing nice.

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.0/system/oss/

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What type of "sound" do you try to listen to?
alsa added channel mapping for surround sound with the 1.0.27 version that is in current since may, and I found that it's not working fairly well yet. I wouldn't be surprised that kernel 3.8.13 didn't support this while 3.9.X does.
In my case, it came out at very unequal sound in VLC with 5.1 files, since no downmixing is done and I only get the left and right front channel and not the center and surround ones.

@ReaperX7, Thanks for the idea.

@rvdboom, Volume, the lack thereof, is the problem.