Comment 5 for bug 109457

Okay, So I didn't understand this bug correctly for a long time, so I was not able to describe it correctly. It exists in every distribution and configuration that I've ever used, so that means the bug is at least 11 months old now. I've used kde on debian, mepis and ubuntu. Simply, my sound card has Master, PCM, and LFE channels. The Master is really front; it does not control LFE. Therefore, if you want LFE (which makes music so much better) you are faced with a situation where the mute shortcuts don't actually mute the sound, since LFE is still audible. To mute sound, you must manually mute both LFE and Master. Oddly, if you set Master volume to 0 (as opposed to muting), LFE is muted, but if Master is very low (say 5), LFE is still audible at full volume.

The people on #alsa instructed me to write a ~/.asoundrc that creates a software master. This didn't seem to really solve the problem; also, youtube videos (flash?) do not play sound with a software master for some reason.

As a solution (and actually a very pleasent one), I wrote a script that magically fixes it. Theres a bug I'm still working on, but it seems to work very well for me. If you want to use it, associate hot keys with "volcontrol.pl mute" "volcontrol.pl up" and "volcontrol.pl down"... you can do this with the kde menu editor, or xbindkeys, or some other method. Its kde dependent, but I might be able to fix that.

The script just uses amixer and sets LFE independently of Master. Please report any problems you may have with it, as it is unlikely to work with all configurations.

LCPI gives me this info:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
If I recall correctly, its a sigma tel audio card. This is a Dell E1705 laptop.