I just installed OpenSuse 11.1 on my Acer Aspire 4810tz laptop and have the volume turned up all the way but it is still too low. I have applied all current updates. When I boot to my windows 7 partition the volume is fine. What settings can I change to increase the volume within OpenSuse 11.1?

Thank You,
Tracy

Do you use alsa?
In a terminal type
alsamixer and adjust the volume

Hi Tracy, welcome to LQ!

Have you tried `alsamixer` ?

First, try running the command alsaconf as root. Follow the simple instructions & click yes/no as required.

Then, depending on the results of that (whether it works or not), do the following (as root):

This should bring up a mixer console. Check that the master volume and PCM volume are turned up. Use the left/right arrow keys to select a slider, and use up/down to increase/decrease the volume level(s) of any sliders that you need to adjust.

When done, hit ESCAPE.

Now type:

To (hopefully) save the settings so you don't need to do this all the time. And now, test your sound.

Best of success,
Sasha

Sasha,

Thank you for you quick reply and help. I learn something new everyday about linux.

I opened a root terminal and first ran alsoconf to configure my sound card then ran alsamixer to verify the volume levels. The levels were at max but the sound is still very low. When I boot back to windows the levels are fine. I was thinking of downloading some livecds with different flavors of linux or bsd to see if it is my kernel or opensuse and my laptop. I have another HP laptop that uses alsa and the same distro and the sound is fine. That confirms it's a software issue.

Thanks,
Tracy

Yes I use alsa and tried what you suggested but the volume is still low. I am going to try some livecds to see if the volume improves when using a different distribution.

Thank you,
Tracy

Hi Tracy,

Perhaps providing a little more info would help us/someone diagnose the situation:

1) On your other HP machine where ALSA works fine, is that machine older than the non-working one? Is the non-working Acer a very new machine?

2) When you have the good-working HP machine booted up, run the following commands, and provide the output for us:

shell# lspci
shell# lsmod
shell# uname -a

3) Now, boot the non-working Acer machine, and provide the output from the same commands as above.

This way, we can compare the audio device on each machine, and see what sound driver(s) you are using (assuming the sound drivers are kernel modules, as opposed to kernel built-ins). And the third command will tell us what kernel you're running on each machine.

All the best,
Sasha

It now works and I am not sure what I did to fix it. Probably when I used the console version of alsa to configure and set the sound solved the problem.

Thank you very much for your quick responses,
Tracy Scott

Maybe before the testing last time, but AFTER you set up the mixer, the sound server had not been restarted. Now, it's been rebooted/restarted and the new settings are being used?

Either way, glad you got it sorted! (you can mark your thread [solved] if you haven't yet: see "Thread Tools" in the drop-down menu above)

Cheers,
Sasha