Comment 0 for bug 548707

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

On Lucid I am finding my sound easily distorts with the volume set to 30% or less. I found a blog post at http://phronetic.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/loud-and-distorted-sound-in-ubuntu-9-10/ and observed that the PCM in alsamixer was always at 100%. I followed the change described in the post and changed:

volume = merge
 to
volume = ignore

Then restarted pulseaudio and the sound no longer distorts.

ProblemType: Bug
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.21.
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: insanity 8111 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p: insanity 8111 F...m pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xfc100000 irq 22'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC888'
   Components : 'HDA:10ec0888,1458e601,00100001'
   Controls : 40
   Simple ctrls : 22
CheckboxSubmission: 627843f773788cb8684bdb11b1715f9c
CheckboxSystem: 9038dc5b445882e24b06ebe5cf05c9fc
Date: Fri Mar 26 21:34:54 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.22~0.9.21+stable-queue-32-g8478-0ubuntu12 [modified: usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf.common]
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-17.26-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
SourcePackage: pulseaudio
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-17-generic x86_64
mtime.conffile..etc.pulse.default.pa: 2010-02-20T22:57:37.213481