initscript should account for decreased attenuation upon driver major version upgrades to prevent distorted sound

[James Sharpe]

After upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy the sound has become distorted on my laptop.

Its a Conexant CX20549 (Venice) sound card.

It still works under the gutsy kernel 2.6.22-14 but fails under kernel 2.6.24-16.
I have tried upgrading alsa to 1.0.16rc1 with the same problem.

[Jeff (valderrama)]

Ah, finally I've found someone with the same problem. I don't know exactly what Conexant I have in my HP Pavilion dv9000 but the sound is severely distorted after upgrading to 8.04. It's as if the volume being sent is far too high for the system to handle but the distortion is there even if I lower the master volume. It happens 100% of the time, not just with certain applications.

[James Sharpe (mail-jsharpe)]

Its probably a very similar Conexant if not the same as I have a HP Pavilion dv6317eu.

[Kasper Peeters (kasper-peeters)]

This also happens on my Lenovo t60, which has an Intel 82801G. Exactly as described above: the volume
seems to be far too high, but even with both master and pcm volume lowered the distortion does not go
away.

[lexhan (lexhan)]

I match these problems after an upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy on a Compaq Presario V6000, also with a Conexant CX20549 (Venice) sound card. No adjustments with either the Sound preferences or the ALSA mixer seem to make a difference. The distortion is severe enough to render the system basically unusable for audio purposes at the moment.

[Kevin (blackfire1017)]

I'm having the same problem. This did not happen with the 2.6.24-14 kernel but unfortunately I already uninstalled it. I am using a HP dv6000 laptop with a conexant sound card.

[Ashley Towns (ikex)]

Im also having the same problem, sound was fine in gutsy now its way to distorted (i have a presario V3000)

[Gireesh (sgireeshmail)]

I have a compaq presario v3425 too. Same problem. filed a bug report#178679 which has been marked as duplicate of this one.

[richard (richardbeute)]

Same problem here with HP Pavilion DV9000.
How can I find out wich sound card I am using? I tried LSHW, LSPCI and HWINFO but the only thing I have found is: 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller

thx,

Richard

[AEhere (eugalad)]

I have the same problem on a Packard-Bell Easynote mb87-p-007 (laptop)
I use a Conexant Venice card and sound was fine on gusty.

[Jonas Braathen (ponas)]

I have the same problem on an HP dv6525eo. Conexant CX20549.

I used this guide on Gutsy to get working sound, it doesn't work with the latest drivers on Hardy:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto

[AEhere (eugalad)]

Decreasing the PCM slider on the volume control panel to am minimum seems to help,
 as it no longer sounds as if the volume setting was too high.

However that prevents the sound output from being at it's maximum.

[Kevin (blackfire1017)]

I just noticed something weird.. when I move the PCM slider down, the distortion goes away completely. I can then move the PCM slider all the way up again without the distortion coming back.

[Andrew Brown (brownan)]

I have a HP dv9000 and was having what sounds like the same problem. Turns out the PCM was set somehow to 600 something out of 100. I could see the exact value in alsamixer. Bumping it down to 100 fixed everything.

[Suvir Kumar (suvirk)]

Guys i found a simple solution
go to the command line and start up alsamixer
go to the PCM volume change it from 6xx to 100

sound will be ok and no more distortion

[lexhan (lexhan)]

That's fixed the issue for me.
Thanks everyone.

[James Sharpe (mail-jsharpe)]

Confirmed this fixes it for me too. Has anyone with this issue tried running a copy of hardy from a liveCD to determine if this is an upgrade only bug or something set wrong by default in Hardy that needs fixing? I don't have time to do it myself at the moment.

[Gireesh (sgireeshmail)]

I just now completed a fresh install of Hardy from the 64bit alternate install cd. The sound is perfectly Ok with no changes on my part. PCM is set to 80 by default.

My earlier setup which caused the bug was an upgrade from 64bit Gutsy to Hardy 64bit.

[Marcello de Sales (marcello-sales)]

I have a HP dv9000 and after a fresh install the 64bit alternate CD... A lot of "tics" "tics" "tics" ... "tics" "tics" "tics" ... "tics" "tics" while I'm testing on the Sound Recorder... As a result, I can't even use SKYPE nor Gizmo... I have another partition with Ubuntu 7.10 and it was working with no problems!

After lending to this issue, I tried using fixing using the suggestions too, but nothing worked. The values were already in 100 on the PCM options...

Thanks

[Anylo (anssi-ylonen-sysopendigia)]

Exactly same happened to my sister after she upgraded her HP 530 from Gutsy to Hardy.

Here's funny workaround: http://techreviews.in/distorted-sound-in-hardy-heron/

[craigester (villageschool)]

I can't believe there is no fix for this yet. As a new "convert" to Ubuntu, I was quite disappointed in the distortion of mid frequencies compared to WinXP. The sound is muddy and quite unpleasant to listen to! I have tried the above stuff plus a whole lot of other things like installing pulseaudio on http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578 but to no avail as there was no sound then.

My machine: AMD64 - need I say more?

An equaliser for Ubuntu might be the answer BUT I think it is an old fashioned bug that was introduced in Hardy. Please can someone give this more priority and visibility as this is going to lose Hardy and Ubuntu in general market share.

[craigester (villageschool)]

OK, I solved my distortion problem by abandoning Rhythmbox for the vastly better Amarok. So the bug is actually there somewhere but there is mass confusion on this issue. Good luck with it but I am not looking back!

[Tarnay Kálmán (tarnay-kalman)]

Setting the PCM volume for me to 74[db gain=0.00, 0.00] solved it.
It was actually changed to 100 by MPD.... well actually me... but through MPD... through an MPD client...

I got all gnome applications to leave my PCM volume alone and instead play with the Headphone's volume(which is not actually the headphones' ...), but it seems that a gimmix(a gnome MPD client) set it through MPD. (All MPD clients do it this way)

Card: Intel ICH5
Chip: Analog Devices AD1981B

[Kasper Peeters (kasper-peeters)]

The problem which I experienced on the Thinkpad t60 seems to be unrelated: it used to have the hardware volume controls linked to the software volume controls, which produced the distortion. Now that a recent update disabled this connection (and keeps the software volume at the same level when pressing the hardware volume buttons), the distortion also seems to be gone for me.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Not a driver issue. The initscript, however, needs to properly sanitise levels. In the very near future, this will be done via udev.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Done in kernel now

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