No VIA controls available in alsamixer or volume control

[Erick Brunzell]

Binary package hint: alsa-utils

Just noticed in Karmic Beta that no "VIA" toggles exist either in gnome-alsamixer, alsamixer, or volume control as they have at least since Gutsy (my first Ubuntu). I'd always preferred the simplicity of gnome-alsamixer.

These are vital to obtain reasonable sound quality with the VIA technologies VT82XX (AC 97) series sound cards. Otherwise volume is way too low. Very common sound card in Everex, lower end Biostar boards, lots of low end all-in-one mobos.

Just as a matter of troubleshooting, I was able to get them working by installing the Realtek drivers which causes a downgrade of alsa-ultils and alsa-libs, but that causes other breakage. Luckily, after adjusting the VIA toggles to about 93%, I was able to upgrade those packages to current Karmic status and the volume level stays correct.

So it is just a "control" issue, but I feel very important! Screenshots available here comparing old behavior to new:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8105851&postcount=1

I'll be glad to help in any way I can.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Oct 14 20:08:33 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: alsa-utils 1.0.20-2ubuntu5
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.46-generic
SourcePackage: alsa-utils
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:1724): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:1782): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:1794): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (gnome-panel:1781): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_x11_colormap_foreign_new: assertion `GDK_IS_VISUAL (visual)' failed

[emarkay (mrk)]

Also, the HD Audio (also Realtek) needed to be installed on my system, as well as the AC97 Realtek drivers. The files that needed to be downloaded, in both separate instances are:

LinuxPkg_5.13.tar.bz2 (Renamed on my system to: realtek-linux-HDAudio-5.13.tar.bz2 - for clarity.)
and
realtek-linux-audiopack-4.06a.tar.bz2 (Renamed on my system to: realtek-linux-AC97-4.06a.tar.bz2 - for clarity.)
These are found here:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

In my specific case this issue is "resolved" with update to proposed linux-image-2.6.31-15-generic:

" * sound: via82xx: move DXS volume controls to PCM interface"

While there are no longer any VIA toggles I can now achieve reasonably acceptable sound quality/volume.

Can't ask for any more than that :^)

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Thanks for the confirmation.